Winterborn
by Singtoangels1
Summary: Draco Malfoy, bored and on house arrest after the war, has no desire to help the Ministry of Magic solve the mystery of a plague called the Green Death. Fate has other ideas.
1. Chapter 1

Draco was too well-bred to squirm in his seat like a first year, so instead he brought his leg up to rest his booted ankle on one knee and breathed in heavily through his nose. The dust of the library was making his head and face itch, but he did not scratch. He tried to keep his lips from curling at the edges like a day-old sandwich, but he didn't believe himself to be successful.

"Do you plan to be at it _all _day?" he asked with exasperation, the second-to-last word stretching like taffy before snapping the ending word up into a question.

Granger blinked up at him, then bent her head back to her book and turned another page.

He studied her for want of something better to do. Hermione Granger sat on her heels on the floor of his library, reading one of _his_ family books. Damned Ministry had sent her. Apparently the Malfoy family library was the last place anyone had seen a certain book that _supposedly_ could save the wizarding world.

Draco didn't bloody care. Let them all rot.

Especially if he had to deal with that stubborn woman in his home. Every day. For the past three months. Now she decided, at one of his lowest ebbs, to make a pathetic stab at dressing like a girl. And he had to behave and not say anything when she looked like _that_?

She might have thought she looked cute in those ghastly fuchsia robes, but she just looked common. The fabric was cheap, and the cut was no less than 15 years out of style. Granted, wizarding fashions didn't change that quickly, but it was still not very modern. And what the hell had she done to her hair to make it worse than usual? Bloody rat's nest. The colour of the fabric made her skin look grey and accentuated the dark rings under her eyes.

Although he had to admit that it showed off what he had always assumed to be non-existent breasts quite well. Too bad she had them covered up with her mountains of frightful hair. He briefly wondered if he should throw Granger at his mother to give her something to keep her occupied. She'd have the girl shaped up in a flash.

Then what? If Granger actually looked decent, maybe she'd land a bloke and go bother him instead of taking up space and air in his ancestral home. And then the wizarding world would die out from the plague, and he'd be free from house arrest. Or dead.

Draco breathed in again through his nose, this time to speak: "Keen robes, Granger," he drawled. "Did you dig them from the bin behind a charity shop?"

Granger's head shot up. "What?"

"Your robes," he enunciated. "They're dreadful. It's hurting my eyes to look at you."

She frowned. "Why are you looking at me, then?"

Draco shrugged. "What else am I going to do whilst you pillage my family's library looking for a cure to save people I loathe?"

Granger's lips tightened into a line that Draco thought very much resembled the pickled expression worn by his childhood tutor. He knew that look well from school, too. Granger had worn it almost every time she had ever spoken to him. He had it memorised. It was probably the only thing predictable about her other than her love for books.

"I'm looking for a cure to help everyone. That includes you."

He scoffed. "Whatever. You just want to get back into the limelight again. Is it bothering you that much that the _Daily Prophet _isn't printing your picture every day anymore? Sorry that the plague is taking a bit of attention away?"

Granger raised an eyebrow at him but said nothing for a moment. The silence stretched between them. He knew she wasn't an attention-seeking prat, like Potter. He also didn't think she was poor so the charity bit wasn't spot on either. Draco realised that he was better at insulting Potter and Weasley than Granger. Now that she'd grown into her looks a bit, and they were no longer in school, there wasn't really much to tease her about except perhaps her hair or her blood status. And despite his pride in his heritage, a war over that one thing had soured him on ever thinking seriously about it again.

"You're just scared," she said at last and returned to her book.

Draco sat up straighter. "I'm not scared."

She turned another page.

Why would he be scared of a plague that reduced the unhappy wizards who contracted it into drooling fools that stumbled around pissing themselves and weeping blood until they finally drowned in an emerald green liquid that magically generated in their lungs on the fifth day? No one knew how the liquid got there, or where it came from. Only that it dribbled out of the mouth of the deceased, and it had come to be known as the Green Death. Or just 'the plague' if you didn't care much about specifics. Everyone knew to what you were referring anyway. No point in being dramatic about it.

"Why didn't you just go ask my father?" Draco traced the stitching of his armrest. "He's read every book in this library."

"He wouldn't speak with me," Hermione said crisply. "And we couldn't compel him to tell us anything, either. He's immune to Veritaserum."

"You're clever, Granger," Draco smirked. "I'm sure you could think of something else to motivate him."

She stared at him, horrified.

Draco spluttered. "Not _that_! I meant a bit of freedom to move around, some luxuries, visits from Mother."

Granger narrowed her eyes. "I'd rather not make deals with Death Eaters."

Draco rolled his pupils toward the wall and scratched his finger down the armrest. "Sure, sure. Play the shining, virtuous maiden. Untainted by intrigue." He scoffed. "You're practically a Slytherin. I remember what happened to Umbridge."

She was gazing at the book again, absently turning pages, but he saw the smirk caressing the corner of her mouth.

It was times like these that he almost enjoyed her . . . intrusions. The Ministry had thrust her into his home. He suspected that they chose her either to irritate him or to force more of their equality tripe down his throat. It certainly wasn't Potter or Weasley who had chosen for her to come. They had both Floo'd him with dire warnings to treat her respectfully 'or else'.

He also couldn't afford the fines that came along these days when venting out words like 'Mudblood'. Only two years since Potter and the Dark Lord had it out and already Draco was wondering if it really was better without the old snake-faced bastard. Everything was so restrictive now and yet again he was a prisoner in his own home. Why was it any better now than it was then?

Draco looked at Granger again and thought that if the Dark Lord had won she'd have possibly still wound up on her knees in his library, but it would have hardly been as innocent as it was now. He frowned at the thought. He never could stomach violence against women. Didn't like drawing blood or hurting people who hadn't done anything wrong. It bothered him. To the Dark Lord, it had made him weak. To the Carrows, his reluctance had been a frequent source of entertainment. But to his mother, well, _she _thought he was a hero.

He sat up a bit taller in his chair and tried to shove away the memories that always seemed to encroach. Too much time on his hands. He couldn't leave the grounds, and he had already read every book the library contained four months previously. Not that he'd tell Granger that.

"So I heard that Potter and Weasel—"

"I'm not going to discuss them with you, Malfoy," Granger cut him off. "You know I'm not going to play your games so just stop."

And she never even bothered to look up.

Draco gritted his teeth in irritation. "So bloody superior, aren't you, Granger? You think you can come into my house and tear around in my library and ignore me."

She raised her head finally and lifted her delicate eyebrows. Whenever she did this, he had the impression of a butterfly's feelers. It wasn't wholly unattractive, but Granger being Granger . . .

"I didn't know you were supposed to be entertaining me," she said softly. "Go ahead then. I'm watching."

Draco stood from his chair and kicked it away. "You're so bloody—!"

"Wonderful range of vocabulary," Granger said with mock admiration. "Who wrote your lines? They deserve an award."

"Get out!" Draco snarled. "Just get the bloody fu—"

Granger flicked her wand and he fell silent, his hands twitching in impotent rage.

"Enough of that type of language, now. It's vulgar. Surely you know that with all your wonderful pure-blood deportment?"

Draco tried to narrow all of his rage into a wordless spell to make her hair catch fire, but his magical restraints sparked at the attempt, and he kicked a book away instead.

She smiled at him; a seemingly guileless smile that showed off her perfect, straight white teeth.

"Can you behave now or does Nanny have to get cross?"

Draco flicked his pointer and middle up at her in a rude gesture and she pursed her lips. "Prat," she muttered and flicked her wand to release the spell. "Can't you ever be nice?"

Draco gulped a breath to keep from exploding. "Can't you not act like a bloody fu—" He restrained himself with some effort. "You're deliberately provoking me."

Granger shrugged serenely and went back to her book. "Nothing worse than you try with me."

He turned abruptly and flung out his hand to summon the chair back in place before he remembered again that he had no magic. Even after two years he sometimes still forgot about the cuffs and lack of wand. With an uncomfortably warm face, he walked over and picked the chair up and put it back where it was previously.

_She must love this_, he thought. _Coming into my home with all the power in her hands; not sniveling and weeping like she did last time._ Although, he granted, she had managed to lie to Aunt Bella under torture. He mentally gave her a token of respect, grudging though it was. It still didn't make her less bloody annoying. Stupid damned girl.

Draco paced in front of it for a moment or two, then he pulled out his father's pocket watch and smiled. "Oh, time to go, Granger! Don't want to dawdle or your precious Weasel will be upset."

Her head snapped back toward him. "No it isn't! I only just—"

"Two hours ago," he said.

Granger scowled. "Fine. I'll be back tomorrow, then."

"The deal was only three times a week and this is the third time—"

She hurled the book she'd been reading at his head. He only just managed to dodge it. Her eyes were almost glowing with righteous anger.

"How can you be such a thorough _bastard_ at a time like this!" Granger shrieked and got to her feet, stumbling a bit on the hem of her robes. "Don't you have any feelings? Don't you care about all the sick people out there! A hundred people have already died!"

"Yeah? And what do they have to do with me? I'm stuck in my house, a prisoner, for the next three bloody years—"

"Don't you know any other word?" she snapped.

"No!" He roared in her face. "I don't bloody _know _any other bloody _words_!"

Granger compressed her mouth into a line again. "You're so selfish! You don't care about anyone but yourself!"

Draco wanted to pound her head into the wall, and it was only by counting to three that he kept himself from doing so. "You prim little bitch," he snarled. "You think you're so damned clever, but you don't know a bloody thing about me or who I care about."

She was breathing hard, chest heaving, and there was a flush rising up her neck. "Come with me."

"Wha-what?" Draco stuttered. He hated to admit that he was distracted by her all of a sudden. Why was she so damned close? "Come where?"

Granger said nothing but grasped his wrist in her small, warm hand and walked to the fireplace. She threw some of the special Floo powder from a little sack at her waist down and called for St Mungo's. 

* * *

><p>Hermione wasn't having a great day.<p>

Just that morning, Mrs Weasley had shown up at her tiny flat with a hard smile and a no-nonsense attitude about her. Hermione needed to showcase her assets more, she said. And there was no one more qualified to help. Supposedly.

She remembered watching in horror as Mrs Weasley pulled set after set of truly awful robes from her handbag, along with copious quantities of makeup and hair products.

Hermione had gripped her tea cup tightly in the palm of her hand. "Mrs Weasley, Ron and I—"

"Oh tosh!" she said vigorously. "Just friends my foot! He still fancies you. I know he does. And we're going to make him remember that!" Mrs Weasley cast around for something she had dropped. "Don't have any hairpins do you, love? I think I dropped my last one."

Hermione licked her lip very slowly and glanced at the clock near her bed. Twenty minutes until she had to be in the stacks and then from there, off to Malfoy Manor for more fruitless digging through ancient books for a clue as to what was going on.

"Maybe we can do this another time? I'll be at work all day today—"

"No better time, then, is there!" Mrs Weasley insisted. "You'll see Ron and no doubt he'll think you're ravishing in this!" She held up a maroon set of robes that had obviously seen better days. Hermione cringed away from them.

"Ron's favourite colour! He'll love it. Just a little mending . . . "

Hermione shook her head. "Um, he doesn't really like maroon," she mumbled.

Mrs Weasley wasn't listening. "Hmmn, perhaps too much mending for that one. I think maybe we'll go with the fuchsia."

Hermione winced. "Fuchsia?"

"Fuchsia!" Mrs Weasley crowed. "Oh yes, this is it. And it's still in good condition. Just knock a bit of those cobwebs off it. Maybe lower the neckline. Not too much, don't want to look like a tart . . . "

Mrs Weasley continued to mumble to herself and poke at the robes with her wand. They were obviously quite a few years old. Hermione had the sneaking suspicion that they had once belonged to Mrs Weasley herself.

Hermione opened her mouth to tell her that they were too much for the office when Mrs Weasley stuffed a piece of toast in her mouth.

"You don't eat enough, Hermione dear. You're a bit scrawny. But we'll fix that. Yes!"

She sighed and plucked it from between her teeth to take a bite. This was what happened to a woman who goes from seven to zero in too short a span of time. Ron had been the last to move out. Maybe she could convince him to move back to the Burrow. For everyone's peace of mind. And while he was at it, he could conveniently find a new girlfriend and bring her home to meet his mum. Hermione wasn't sure how much more she could—

Mrs Weasley flicked her wand at Hermione and her dressing gown shot off and across the room into the laundry bin, knocking aside toast and teacup in a spray of dark ivory liquid and crumbs. Hermione flung her arms over her chest.

The other woman analysed her critically. "Those're your knickers, Hermione? How are you going to catch a man with those?"

Hermione's eyes widened, and she snatched the robes Mrs Weasley held out to her, struggling to remain polite to the sudden assault. "I don't go around showing them to people!" she spluttered.

Mrs Weasley's smile grew sly. "Well, I'm not saying you should! But if you do show them to someone, they should look nice. Bit of lace—"

"Mrs Weasley!" Hermione cried. She wanted to clap her hands over her ears and hide in the corner. This was too much. "Please stop talking about my knickers!"

The older woman had a glint in her eye. "Embarrassed, eh? Does that mean you've already shown him your knickers or not?"

Hermione felt her face flushing. "None of your—" she cleared her throat. "That's to say—"

Mrs Weasley grabbed the robes and instructed Hermione to hold her arms up. Hermione did, still not quite sure why she was letting herself be steamrolled, but chalked it up to not wanting to burst the woman's false hope just yet. She'd humour her and then transfigure the robes when she got to the Ministry.

Once the robes were fastened, Mrs Weasley waved her wand over them and Hermione felt the waist tighten and the neckline dip a bit more precariously.

"Isn't this a bit much?" Hermione gasped as the waist squeezed her more tightly.

Mrs Weasley tutted. "'s not indecent." She tipped her head and stared critically. "Hair next, then makeup—"

"Oh you know, I don't think I have time for that! I have to be in my office in five—"

"Hair then. We'll do the full treatment tomorrow!"

Hermione stifled a groan and submitted to Mrs Weasley's attempts to make her hair behave. After some unladylike grunting, she decided to just twist it up into a chignon similar to the way Hermione herself would have arranged it.

"It's a start," Mrs Weasley said critically. "Although I daresay this'll catch his attention."

Hermione tried to grin, but her face was in a tight rictus. "I really must go."

"Right! Right!" Mrs Weasley said, bustling her to the fireplace. "Hurry up. Don't want to be late! Tell Ron I said hello!" And she shoved Hermione into the fire, barely remembering the Floo powder.

Hermione had stumbled into the Ministry atrium and immediately found a broom cupboard in which to transfigure her clothes. It was there she had found, to her horror, that Mrs Weasley had charmed the robes against transfiguration and _removal._ She stamped impotently in the cupboard for a moment before she stopped to think seriously how she would get through the day in the robes she was wearing.

A glance down showed a very generous swell of breast peaking over the neckline and she closed her eyes in exasperation. Hermione flicked her wand up at her hair and let it cascade down around her shoulders. If she arranged it in front of her, it was enough to cover herself. What a mess.

Hermione slipped out of the broom cupboard and Disillusioned herself to avoid detection on her way to her office in the Ministry research department. Once there, she managed to avoid the eyes of her co-workers with some quick repelling charms.

Then it was time to go see Malfoy.

She pursed her lips and dared the prat to say anything to her. She threw a handful of the special powder the Ministry had provided to her for accessing his restricted Floo into the grate and stepped into the fireplace, softly calling for Malfoy Manor.

That was all before noon.

Now it was two hours past that and she was dragging Draco Malfoy through the halls of St Mungo's to the special ward they were keeping people who had contracted the Green Death, hoping she wouldn't be fired for taking him from his house without prior permission. There was no cure, only the slight possibility that they could find one if he helped them.

Hermione's shoes clip-clopped determinedly over the stone tiles. Malfoy wasn't even protesting. She thought he must be so glad to leave Malfoy Manor for any reason that he wasn't going to put up a fight with her on this.

She held up her Ministry research badge to the Healer standing near the plague room and she nodded to them. Hermione tugged on Malfoy to make him move and pushed on the double doors to swing them inward.

The sight that met them caused Malfoy to stumble and hang back near the door. She pulled him forward and marched him up and down the aisles to see for himself what the Green Death looked like. He couldn't keep hiding from it. Men, women, children, elderly. It struck without warning, without connection to others, without contagion. There didn't seem to be a common bacterium or virus to fight. They were currently exploring the idea that it was a type of fungus, but the International Academy of Magical Fungi were debating it so fiercely that they would probably never get a real answer about the root cause. Meanwhile, people were dying. None of the healers had caught it, even when there had been an accidental needle poke from one of the patients. It was almost as if an outside force was choosing _these _people to die.

Hermione gripped his wrist even tighter, digging her nails into his flesh. "Do you see?" she asked.

They came to stop before the bed of a young child. Her face was drawn and withered, her lips dry as if she had no moisture in her body. Her eyes were huge inside of sunken eye sockets. A thin stream of green dribbled from the side of her mouth.

Hermione had to turn away for a moment to collect herself, then turn back to the girl with a smile. "Hello, sweetheart. Feeling better today?"

The little girl nodded and tried to push herself up in bed, but a nurse put a gentle hand on her.

"Don't get up, Agnes," Hermione said softly. "I'm here. I see you."

Agnes smiled at her, and she moved her eyes to Malfoy and offered him a shy smile as well.

When Hermione glanced up at him, he was staring at her with a strange expression on his face. As if he had never seen her before.

"What?" she asked.

He shook his head and slid his gaze back to the girl in bed. Malfoy stood up straighter and smiled at Agnes. His mouth was closed, but the corners of his eyes crinkled. He was a better actor than she was, for sure.

"Bye, Aggie. Do what the nurses say!"

The little girl nodded and sank back into the bed. Hermione turned quickly to hide the tears in her eyes. She saw these people every day. Forced herself to visit them so she wouldn't forget what she was working for. It wasn't all down to her, and to the research team at the Ministry she was barely acknowledged. Her work was seen to be not as important as theirs in this search for a cure, but she felt it necessary to do her part well.

"Was this really necessary, Granger?" Malfoy asked quietly.

"Yes!" Hermione hissed. "You're a selfish berk and you don't care—"

"Don't presume!" Malfoy fired back, his voice just as low as hers as they walked back to the Floo in the main lobby. "You don't bloody know me."

"I know you well enough to know that you won't do anything unless it somehow benefits—"

"That's ridiculous!" He barked, louder now that they were out of the sick ward. "Malfoys always stand up to their obligations. We give to charity and perform charitable services as often as any other wizard in—"

"Throwing Galleons at this won't fix the problem!" she snapped. "You have it in your ability to _help_ me. I know you've read all those books in the Malfoy library. I know you could convince your father to give us more information or tell us where we can find some. Lucius knows something, and he knows that we know it. It's like a sport for him."

Malfoy snorted. "Do you really expect him to freely give information to _you?_"

Hermione stood very still, her back ramrod straight. "I don't expect anything from him. But I do expect a drop of human feeling swimming around under all that fake noblesse oblige _you're_ wallowing in."

He pursed his lips and turned his head away slightly. "Why should I help you?"

"You idiot," Granger uttered softly, causing Draco to swing his head back to her. "You aren't helping _me_, you're helping all these people who didn't do anything to you. I don't have anything to do with it. Don't you care at all?"

Draco tried not to look her in the eyes, but they plucked at him anyway; two huge pools of dark brown accusation stabbing him in the heart.

"Don't you want to make up for your crimes during the war?" she asked even more quietly, which was really the straw that broke him.

Draco shoved her away with a sweep of his arm and stomped toward the Floo. She was too close. He needed to get out of the manor more often if bloody _Granger_ was affecting him like this.


	2. Chapter 2

There was nothing here.

Nothing solid anyway. Just faint traces of what could be useful that seemed to disappear when she shed the light of reason and sense on them.

Hermione massaged her nose with the pads of her fingers and squeezed her eyes shut. She'd need spectacles like Harry at the rate she was going. There's only so much tiny, cramped handwriting a human can read before going blind or going mad. She was surprised that her sixth year hadn't done it, but she supposed she was tougher than she felt.

She went back over it all in her head . . . what they believed may have started all of this.

First, a third year boy from Hufflepuff found an emerald necklace in the Black Lake. It was a largish square cut emerald in an ancient setting. McGonagall ran every test she could think of, all with negative results, so she told the boy he could keep it.

The next day he and two others from Hufflepuff were displaying signs of what was now called the Green Death. In Muggle terms, he would have been referred to as Patient Zero, that young Hufflepuff. Soon after, a seventh year from Gryffindor and a first year in Slytherin caught the Green Death. A month later, those students were dead at St Mungo's, their families wailing and weeping.

Hermione shook her head and continued to review her internal assessment.

Shortly after this, a completely unrelated woman from Cornwall came to St Mungo's with symptoms they had already seen in the Hogwarts students. It was then that St Mungo's head healer contacted the Ministry to start an investigation, which lead to Hermione herself becoming involved.

She pursed her lips and picked up her meager notes. Three rolls of parchment. That was it. All the information she had found which _might_ be of value over the past few months. Meanwhile, people were dying all around them in a completely random manner. Very few were connected in any way. She had checked food manufacturers, potions suppliers . . . even collected a list of everything in the homes or immediate surroundings of the affected people. Then a list of everyone they knew. Other than the original Hufflepuffs, there was no social connection with anyone at all. None of them had ingested a common potion or common food. Some were even quite isolated. A man from the Outer Hebrides hadn't seen another human in three years until he showed up at St Mungo's.

It was after these leads had failed Hermione that she thought to check on newly acquired objects, which lead her to the mysterious necklace. They were keeping it in the Auror's office for the moment under lock and key. It was almost impossible to even look at the stupid thing to study it.

The single footnote she found in a book from the Restricted Section showed a sketch of the necklace in question, along with a scrambled note that more information about the object could be found in the Malfoy family library.

Today, in the rat-riddled and mouldy stacks of parchment rolls she found in a dark corner of the Ministry archives, she found that there was another plague with eerily similar symptoms in 1552 that disappeared as mysteriously as it started. There was no way that it was coincidental.

_Saint Wulfric's day 1553 anno domini, buryd last sufrer ov that sickeness whych causeth greene humors to pore from the lips et greene slime to fill ye lungs. Having last a goodly yeare, our brothers are ful glad of our return to the Lord's favore. Gramarci Jesu._

So she knew from that brief journal entry by an anonymous monk that a plague like this had happened before. Feverish cross-referencing with plague and the years 1552 and 1553 had turned up no new leads.

Hermione was starting to lose hope of finding information to stop this . . . curse? Is that what it was? Perhaps a fungus as some claimed.

She put her face against the book she had in her hands and screwed her eyes up tight, hoping somehow that the answer would come to her. But instead she fell asleep on her books as she had done almost every night since the plague had started.

* * *

><p>Draco buttered his toast lazily as he contemplated the day before him. It had only been three days since Granger dragged him to St Mungo's but he was already starting to feel the walls closing in on him again. Forced isolation. Lack of stimulation. It was making him twitch.<p>

It was almost worth helping her at this point just to have something to _do_.

His lip curled up on one side and Draco observed his reflection in the butter knife. He must be losing his last marble if he was starting to consider working with Granger. His father would be . . . well.

Draco straightened his back and tossed his toast down on the plate with a soft _plink_. He drained his teacup and stood up. He'd have the house elves play Quidditch with him again. It couldn't be any worse than the last time and there wasn't anyone who would see him. He was already as much a pariah amongst his set as he was in the general wizarding population. Stuff Granger if she showed up with that fat mouth of hers blathering about duties. His duty was to himself and the Malfoy family and the rest of them could hang.

He called three of the house elves from the kitchens since they were usually the sturdiest and instructed them to prepare his Quidditch gear for another game. Draco thoroughly ignored their pitiful looks. It wouldn't kill them to play instead of scrubbing pots.

Draco suited up and was just buckling on his arm guards when he saw his mother coming down the main staircase from his parent's wing. He repressed a sigh and knew she'd want conversation for a few minutes before she had her breakfast so he finished adjusting the straps on his arm before looking up. The flippant remark he was going to make about her waking so late died on his lips as she came closer.

"Mother?"

Draco stepped toward her unconsciously as he noticed her death grip on the railing and her stilted walk that was almost a collapse on each stair. He touched her arm and she looked up, startled.

He could feel all the blood drain from his heart. Her eyes were dark wells in a sea of chalk and there was a green trickle coming from the corner of her pallid lips.

"Mother! Are you—?"

Narcissa collapsed against him and Draco dropped his snitch on the stairs. The sharp _tink_ of it repeated over and over as it rolled away down each step. He pulled her more firmly to his chest and dragged her down the stairs, every step a halting agony.

What he'd give for his wand!

She threw up a torrent of emerald liquid once they made it to the bottom and his snitch was now fluttering sadly in a green world. He carried her from there and laid Narcissa carefully on the divan in the library before running for the Floo across the room. He threw a handful of powder into it and screamed for the Auror's office.

A rather grumpy looking Auror answered the Floo call.

"This had better not be another unnecessary—"

"Send someone from St Mungo's! My mother has—" Draco swallowed to prevent his voice from cracking in the warm, dry air of the fireplace. "She has the Green D-death."

Draco squeezed his eyes close. He couldn't believe that he said it. His mother couldn't have the Green Death. She wouldn't die. Not her. "Send someone now. Please."

The Auror tipped his head back and sneered at him but eventually grunted an affirmation and closed the connection.

Draco fell back on his heels beside the fireplace and tried to calm the rising tide of nausea within him. Perhaps if he had helped Granger, a cure would already be on the way! More bad choices to haunt him.

He glanced back at Narcissa and watched her struggle for breath. She was in the last stage. She'd die within a week if he didn't find a cure. How did she get so sick without him noticing? How did this escape him? Why didn't she tell him?

He crawled over to his mother and cradled his head on her stomach, pulling one of her hands up and placing it over his cheek. "I'll fix this, Mother. I promise."

Then Draco Malfoy cried.


	3. Chapter 3

Hermione had barely escaped Mrs Weasley's ministrations that morning. An elaborately woven braid was the only evidence of her handiwork and for that Hermione was thankful. According to Mrs Weasley, the robes she had been crammed into the week before had stuck to her until midnight. Too bad she hadn't thought to try taking them off again until the next morning.

As she sat at a table in a gloomy interview room at Azkaban prison, waiting to see Lucius Malfoy, Hermione was infinitely glad not to have been forced into another creation _a la_ Molly Weasley. She would never have lived it down.

She lifted her chin and settled her parchment in place in the hopes that the man would finally talk now that his wife was dying. This reminded her of the man next to her and Hermione cast a quick glance at him.

Draco Malfoy was dressed in Quidditch gear. His hair spiked up on once side as if he'd raked his hands through it several times. He probably had. Hermione found this strangely appealing, as if he were more human now.

He still had splashes of green on his face and hands, which trembled alarmingly against the tabletop. Hermione pulled her beaded bag out of her robes and searched inside for a handkerchief. Once she found one, a quick _aguamenti_ dampened it enough to be serviceable.

She held it out to him on an open palm for several seconds, but his mind seemed to be a million miles away. She hesitated for a moment before tucking it directly into his hand. Malfoy seemed to come back to Earth at that and he gazed dumbly at the cloth as if he didn't know quite what it was.

"Your face, Malfoy. And hands. They still have . . ."

Hermione trailed off at his sudden, intense scrutiny. His pupils were blown, the gray iris like a thin glass ring. She couldn't help staring back at him, and she tried to project calm and peace as she would if she were confronted with a wild animal. She finally put her finger on her cheek.

"You might like to clean up before you see your father, is all," she said softly.

He blinked and then turned back toward the front of the room and mechanically scrubbed at his face. Most of the green was gone now except for his hands, which were still speckled.

The door clicked and an Auror lead what Hermione knew must be Lucius Malfoy into the room. Draco stood instantly until his father was seated properly with one wrist chained to the table. Hermione said nothing and tried to give them time to adjust. It was time they didn't have, but she gave it gladly just so she could tune out the awkwardness.

Lucius lifted his face and smoothed his long platinum hair from his forehead. He gazed at them both dispassionately, but she supposed that he had a warmer gleam when his eyes passed over Draco. No one spoke. The Auror standing behind the elder Malfoy shifted and Hermione could hear the creaking leather of his wand holster. She set the parchment in her hands down and stood the transcribing quill on end above it.

She cleared her throat and sat up a bit straighter. "Mr Malfoy, we are here today because your son has agreed to cooperate with our investigation into the cause of the Green Death and I was hoping that—"

"Why would he do that?" Lucius asked sharply, all of the old arrogance and superciliousness in his voice. "I didn't give permission—"

"Mother," Draco said simply. "She has it. She's dying."

Lucius locked eyes with Draco across the table. Hermione had the impression of a silent communication going on between the two men and realised that they probably were speaking without words despite the fact that neither had wands to perform a legilimens charm. Finally the man's eyes drifted down to Draco's hands and the handkerchief balled in his fist.

He shifted back in his chair and gazed passively at Hermione from across the table. "What is it that you need to know, Miss Granger?"

Hermione released a breath that she hadn't realised she was holding and closed her eyes in an involuntary prayer of thanks.

"We need any and all information you hold about the Green Death or the necklace we believe to be at the root of the plague."

He nodded and glanced briefly at Draco. "Do you have this necklace so I might look at it?"

Hermione snapped the clasp of her beaded bag open, levitated it out, and directed her wand to set it on the table.

"It's surrounded by an anti-curse field so don't touch it with your bare skin."

"I have no reason to touch it," Lucius said as he studied the pendant. "Found this at Hogwarts? In the lake?"

Hermione nodded in mute astonishment. Lucius waved at the necklace so she put it back in her handbag.

"I know what the object is. And you're right, it did start this plague. It has done so before."

"Yes," Hermione interjected, "I read an account by a monk from 1553 who said that a plague with the same symptoms had just ended."

He nodded. "But even before that. At least twice that I've read accounted for."

Hermione could feel a flush of excitement overtake her body. "Where? Where did you read this?"

Lucius Malfoy's lip twitched ever so slightly and she knew that the game of cat and mouse she'd played with him for so long wasn't over yet. "Private family books, Miss Granger."

Hermione pursed her lips. "If you want us to help your wife, then we need solid facts not more games, Mr Malfoy."

"Little lioness needs her claws clipped, Draco," Lucius said without looking at his son.

"Just answer, Father," Draco replied tightly. "Mother's dying. We don't have time for—"

"We have as much time as I say we do!" Lucius admonished, whipping his eyes back to his son. "Don't be impertinent."

Draco stood up and banged the table with his fist. "Enough! Just tell us or I swear that when I'm released I'll disinherit my_self_ and the Malfoys will end with _me._"

Lucius blinked twice and his son seemed to realise what he'd said and slowly slinked back into the chair. There was silence then, thick in the room and only broken by the sounds of breathing and the rustling of cloth as Hermione put her beaded handbag away. She half hoped that the sound would break the tension.

Lucius clasped his hands together and stared at the wall to his right for what felt like several minutes. He twisted his signet ring around his finger several times as he contemplated. Finally he looked back at Draco and slid his ring off his pointer finger. Hermione heard Draco gasp from beside her and she turned quickly to see if he was in some type of pain so she missed the look on Lucius Malfoy's face as he said the following words:

"With this seal, I hand my lands, my wealth, and my life to my beloved son."

"Father," Draco muttered weakly. "You can't."

Lucius looked down at the ring. "I must. To save your mother now as I couldn't before." He held it out on his palm. "Take it."

"But why—?" Lucius lifted a single eyebrow and Draco stopped talking completely.

Draco carefully plucked the ring from his father's palm and slid it silently onto his left pointer finger. The ring glowed red for a moment and Hermione's hair crackled with the latent magical energy that flooded the room. The Auror shifted again and started forward but Hermione held up her hand to make him stop.

Draco reached his right hand across the table and clasped his hand fully around his father's. "I'm sorry for what I said. I'll always be a Malfoy. I won't disappoint you."

Lucius nodded. "The books you're looking for are in my study. You know where. You can collect them and read them now as—" he paused, "as master of the manor."

"Which books specifically are we looking for, Mr Malfoy?" Hermione asked, hesitant to break the moment the man was having with his son since they wouldn't likely see each other again for years.

He glanced at her disdainfully. "_You_ will read nothing, Miss Granger. My son is the only person now who can read the books. They are the private diaries of every Malfoy since the Conquest."

"But that could be _hundreds_ of books!" Hermione said shrilly. "How can we possibly—"

Lucius cut her off by speaking to Draco again. "Look at the diaries of Guiscard Malfoi. He'll be the very first set. Look for his marriage. I think it was in 1089. Then read the diaries of Courtenay and Godwin Malfoy. The last diary for Courtney and the first one for Godwin. The others may all have glimpses of information, but those are the ones you want."

Hermione silently fumed at Lucius' dismissive attitude, but was still so thankful for the information that she could kiss the evil old bastard. It was the only thing that stayed her from sweeping Draco away right then and there. Instead she glanced at her watch and resolved to give them another five minutes.

The time passed with only soft conversation between father and son. Hermione realised that she had vilified Lucius Malfoy so much in her mind (and deservedly so) that she had never stopped to think of him as a human father and husband. When she peeked a look at them, the warm affection in his eyes was as evident as his blond hair or ragged prison garb.

The five minutes ticked past and Hermione was going to allow them another minute or two when she heard the Auror cough loudly. Both Malfoy men tensed up and were silent.

"Well," she said quietly. "I suppose we need to go now. Say goodbye, Malfoy. Um, Draco."

The men looked at her and then away. Hermione stood and smoothed down her robes before stepping over to the Auror behind Mr Malfoy. "Please ensure that he is treated well," she asked softly. "He looks quite haggard, and he has been very helpful today."

The Auror snorted. "What'd'ye expect, Miss Granger? This is a bloody prison not a nursery."

Hermione crinkled her brow in a frown and was about to say something back when she felt a presence behind her. She turned and tipped her head back to look Draco Malfoy in the face. He was a bit too close for comfort but she didn't have anywhere to move to in order to make space.

"Let's go," he said gruffly. "We've said our goodbyes. Mother needs me."

Hermione nodded and pulled against the wall to let the Auror past so he could lead them out. She walked around the table and offered her hand to Lucius.

"Mr Malfoy, thank you for your help. I'm sure it will prove invaluable."

Her hand wavered awkwardly there and she felt Draco's eyes on her but she still held it out stubbornly. After a full minute where Hermione internally beat herself up for doing something so stupid, the man surprised her by clasping her hand lightly with his own.

"Despite our history, Miss Granger, I'm glad that it's you working on this with Draco. I feel that the—" He paused for a moment as if picking his words carefully. "The essence of your personality and influence will be helpful to him and to all Malfoys to come."

He tightened his grip momentarily and then released her. "Good luck." Lucius half-turned his head toward the door. "And Draco, save your cunning. This isn't the contest for that. Forget everything I've taught you."

From the look on his face, Draco didn't seem to know anything more than she did. Hermione's head swam with the effort of deciphering Lucius Malfoy's cryptic words as they exited the interview room.

* * *

><p>Draco smiled and hunched further into the book he was reading. Granger was fuming behind him, unable to read a word of the old Norman French due to the shielding spells that protected the diaries from being read by anyone but the current patriarch. Which was now him.<p>

His smile slipped a little at the thought. Then Granger tapped her foot impatiently and gave another breathy sigh of exasperation.

"Why don't you take notes like I suggested, Granger? That's what you're best at anyway. Following orders like a cocker spaniel."

There was silence for a moment until a hand suddenly boxed his right ear sharply. Draco dropped the book and clutched his ear. "Fu—"

Quiet again as she had cast a non-verbal _silencio_ on him. He glared at her over his father's desk and watched as she serenely sat in the chair _he_ usually occupied. She smoothed her robes over her crossed legs and summoned the writing slant from across the room with parchment and ink. A quill was pulled from her unusually sleek hairdo and she sat up pertly with an air of expectancy.

"I'm waiting for your orders, O Great Malfoy."

He glared at her impertinent face, and closed his eyes, attempting to somehow break the Ministry's suppression of his magic. He managed a squeak of sound before she scoffed and waved her wand at him to release the spell.

"Do that again and I'll—"

"You'll what?" she asked sharply. "Stop helping your mother?"

Draco didn't say anything. He drew a deep breath and skimmed over the diary of Guiscard Malfoi in his hands instead. She inhaled and exhaled, clothes rustled, fingers tapped softly on her upper arm. He ignored it.

Even with the translation spell the diary automatically provided, it was tough reading. After the clock rang the hour, he finally found a small morsel of information. He was sure that this was the bit to which his father had referred.

Draco read it aloud:

_Eadburga gave me this evening a gift. A large square emerald the size of a robin's egg in an ancient Gaulish setting. It is a pretty enough trifle, but she told a story with the gem. Since her brother died, her father instructed her to give this to me and so carry forward the ancient line of a man she calls Gwayn. Their family had been blessed by the Green Man, so she says, and any Winterborn son of ours shall be doubly blessed. I think her line must not have been so blessed since it is now extinct, but I will pass it on to our first son as she has asked. I had a mind to sell it, but it is a small thing and I have found her quite buxom as many of the Angle witches here are. She has magnificent dugs that have kept my attention—_

Draco stopped suddenly and remembered that Granger was still in the room. When he looked up over the top of the book her eyes were glittering hard orbs in her pale face.

"He passed the necklace to his son because he liked her breasts," she stated coolly.

He couldn't help but smirk. "Apparently. Might want to look into some charms there, Granger."

Now that was a lie. Draco freely admitted to himself that Granger certainly wasn't deficient there. He shifted uncomfortably when she looked down at her chest in disbelief. It was a good thing she was wearing one of those shapeless robes again instead of that revealing fuschia monstrosity. At least he could think properly this way without the things _looking_ at him. When she'd moved her hair aside last week, her nipples had almost peeked over the top of those damned . . .

Draco was glad that there was a desk between them. He would have felt worse about his burgeoning erection if he didn't clearly remember the time in third year when he'd been in agony at the Slytherin table because of the way the light struck Eloise Midgin's _hair _two benches away. Her hair of all things. Bloody pixie pile like Granger's and her face wasn't even half as pleasant.

He tossed the book back on the desk, plucked up the last diary of Courtenay Malfoy, and began to flip through it idly. He couldn't help but be hyper aware of Granger's presence, even if she was across the desk from him.

Draco lowered the top of the book to observe her since she was sitting idle with her face turned away from him. He followed with his eyes the arch of her neck up to her cheek and then back down. The neck of her robes frustrated him, buttoned as they were to the very top. He found himself wishing that she would slip a few of the buttons from the holes so he could see what was underneath again when suddenly the top five buttons just fell away revealing a generous glimpse of her skin and underclothes.

He quickly went back to the book. She hadn't seemed to notice yet. He had to remember what his father had told him about the ring and it's ability to sometimes anticipate a person's thoughts or desires.

The clock ticked.

Granger huffed, and puffed, and shifted, which only revealed more of her skin. He ignored her and read the bloody book. Talk of crops and taxes to the Crown. Draco wrinkled his forehead and was about to sacrifice his dignity to ask Granger when he remembered that this was before wizards separated themselves from Muggles. This was during the time that they lived among Muggles, side by side, and sometimes even married them. Except his family. And several others. Even the Weasleys didn't marry Muggles.

Draco plopped the book on the desk so he could lean his elbow on it to support his head. It seemed unintentionally easier this way to spy on Granger except that she was now glaring at him. The pink it brought to her cheeks made him uncomfortable again. He idly wondered, as he flipped through yet more pages about crop yields, when he became so desperate that he had to ogle Granger as if she was a glass of water in the desert.

His gaze trailed down the soft creamy skin of her throat. It was a really nice glass of water, too. Except for the hair. That was still frightful.

She turned toward him and he dutifully went back to the book. His mother's life was at stake and he was sitting there leering at Granger like a depraved thirteen year old boy.

Draco pinched the bridge of his nose and wished again that he'd had his wand. He flicked his eyes up at Granger again, but this time assessing her reasonability. Should he ask her for her wand? It was a bit intimate and technically illegal now, but this was also the girl who ran with Potter and engaged in activities of questionable legality for years. She had more in her soul than a stuffy schoolmarm despite common opinion. She'd bloody _lied_ to his aunt. He couldn't even do that! Besides, she was a Gryffindor. Breaking the rules and cheating for a 'good' cause was what they did. He almost smirked until he remembered that it would reduce her trust in his intensions.

"Granger," he said quietly, trying not to startle her. "This is going to take all night. We need this information now."

She shifted in her chair and looked at him again. Her arms were crossed over her chest, but he steadily ignored her body in favour of her face. Her features were tight with distrust as she stared at him and her frame was rigid. She would need serious motivation. And brutal honesty. Vulnerability he didn't want to show, but it was necessary. He'd have to pull a Hufflepuff.

"I need your wand."

Granger made a sort of snorting scoff and turned her head away. "You're mad, Malfoy. All the time alone in this decrepit old place has made your brains soft."

He held back sigh of irritation. "If you want us to be done with this any time soon, I need your wand. Otherwise it could take another full day before I find the right information."

She turned her face back to him. "How thick do you think I am? Not only could I lose my job, but I'd go to Azkaban." Granger ran her eyes over him in a brief assessment. "Or you could kill me with my own wand. Not a way I want to die."

Draco seized his hair in both hands and squeezed. She was so irritating! "I don't know about you, Granger, but I _love_ my mother. I don't know how you feel about your parents, but despite everything that happened in this bloody house with that snake bastard, I love them. Especially her."

He caught her eye and held it for a moment. "Help me save her."

Draco could see the moment when he'd won. It was as if a lake was melting and the first crack in Granger's armour clearly showed in her eyes first. Then her shoulders seemed to collapse down, and her eyes became especially glossy. Her lip even trembled and grew red.

"My parents . . ." she whispered. "I love them, too."

Draco held out his hand but she surprised him instead by getting up and walking around the desk to stand beside him. She pulled her wand from the holster on her hip and placed her other hand on his shoulder.

Granger sniffed a couple of times and cleared her throat. "I may believe you want the best for your mother, but I'm not stupid. I'm not going to release you until you've given my wand back. Don't try anything funny or I'll choke you. I'm standing close enough to do it before you could say the words. If you can even cast a spell with the restraints on."

A lopsided smile started to form on his face until he realised how close she really was. How close her bare chest was to his cheek. Even closer as she leant over and placed her wand carefully in his palm.

"I'm watching you," she said softly.

He sat there dumbly for a moment, trying not to look like a complete fool as he contemplated what spell he needed to say. How did the wand movements go? The inflection? It'd been too long since he'd held a wand. Even Granger's wand; that slim vine rod felt comforting in his hands. He couldn't help but caress it slightly in anticipation of making it work for him.

"Malfoy," Granger said hesitantly. "Do you need—"

"I have it," he cut her off sharply. "I don't need you to tell me how to cast a simple spell."

Draco focussed on the ring for a moment and then switched the wand to his left hand. He knew that even with his own magic suppressed as it was, the ring was sensitive to his needs. It would possibly override the restraints and help to direct the spell to what he was looking for, and perhaps even help master Granger's wand. He could feel a slight resistance in it against him, a tugging and a pulling as if it was trying to creep away.

As soon as the ring touched the vinewood, the wand stopped resisting and lay meekly in his left hand. It would be doubly awkward to cast a spell with his non-dominant hand, but he could do it.

Wand tip up. Small circle at the base with tip stationary. Speak the first syllable. Sharp downturn halfway through the second syllable to touch the page.

"_Revelio!"_

Granger huffed and reached over to pluck the wand from his fingers. "All that drama, Malfoy. I could have cast a revealing charm myself! And it won't even work. It's not as if the book knows what . . ."

She fell silent. There was a very soft green glow he could see coming from under the thin parchment page he had open, illuminating it from the underside like a lampshade. He flipped three pages down and there, in sparkling green, was a large section of text.

Granger sucked a breath over her teeth in a way that made a low whistling sound.

"There was nothing but gibberish before, but now I can read it, too!"

He felt a strand of her hair tickle his cheek as she leant over him to examine the book. She didn't seem to be conscious of doing so, especially considering the gaping fabric of her sensible robes. Her chest was firmly notched against his shoulder and he had to force himself not to react like a sex-starved idiot and stare or grope her.

Her hands darted out, wand clattering to the desk, and she snatched the book from in front of him.

"What the—?"

Draco wouldn't look at her. Couldn't look. Not when he was so _aware_. Bloody forced isolation!

"It's gibberish again!" she cried. "I swear that it was words. Real words!"

He breathed out hard derisively. "You're lucky it didn't destroy your soul or shrivel your hands into dessicated claws."

She slammed the book back on his desk and stormed around to sit in the seat she was in before.

"Should I continue?" Draco asked dryly. "Or did you want me to do all the work."

If she was that type of person, he would probably be staring at a nasty hand sign by this point. The thought of Granger doing something like that made him struggle to keep a laugh inside. He _was_ trying to look put upon.

"Read," she gritted out slowly. "I'm taking notes."

Draco felt an euphoric bubble of glee spring up inside him. Served the damned know-it-all right. Bloody controlling witch. Now he had the control. No more coming to his house, barging in, and demanding to look at his books. She had to wait because he had all the answers.

_I was challenged today by a giant green knight. I say he was a green knight because his hair, clothing, skin, and even his horse were green. He appeared as a wild man of the wood. He rode straight into my hall and asked if I was Winterborn. I confirmed that I was and he issued a challenge to me. If I did not meet him at Lud's Church one year from today then there would be grave consequences. _

_Just as suddenly as he came, he was gone. I would doubt my mind, but my beloved wife assures me that I have not since she also saw the spectre. Even if I knew where Lud's Church lay, I see no reason to answer him. Besides, it is the second day of Christmas and I am inebriated as is my wife. It is possible that we dreamed the entire thing._

"He ignored it?" Granger said shrilly. "This huge green person rode into his house on a horse and he just pretended it didn't happen?"

Draco shrugged. "There seems to be more further in the book here. Do you want me to finish?"

She seemed mentally far away. "No. Don't read any more yet. Give me a moment. This seems very familiar to me."

"You read something about a green knight?"

"That doesn't mean anything! Muggle fairy tales don't have anything to do with this." Draco put the book down and stretched his arms up over his head. When his stomach growled he realised that he hadn't eaten anything since breakfast so he summoned an elf from the kitchens.

"Dilly, bring me something to eat." Draco assessed Granger quietly. She'd been with him most of the day. "And something for Miss Granger, too. We have a long night ahead."

* * *

><p>Hermione sat back in her chair, quite exhausted. Her hand was cramping and the tendons throbbed like they hadn't done since she revised for her O.W.L's. She should have just set a transcription quill to go but she wanted to make sure that every word was recorded properly. In this situation she had the sense that even one wrong word could destroy their chances of finding the end of this tangled web.<p>

She reached forward and snagged a piece of cheese with her right hand as she reviewed the roll of parchment in front of her. Three feet of parchment worth of notes in a single night! It was real progress.

Malfoy was sprawled out over his side of the desk, his cheek propped up on a book with his mouth half open. It was three in the morning and they'd been working straight through since five that afternoon. With the stress of the situation, she supposed he deserved some sleep.

Hermione called as softly as she could for the elf that was in the room earlier. Dilly? Perhaps she'd still come if it was for Malfoy.

A little elf with ears that were quite small by the usual standard and a tiny button nose popped into existence. She looked as startled to be there as Hermione was to see her.

The little brow furrowed. "M-mistress called, Dilly?"

Hermione smiled thinly. "I'm not your mistress. I was just hoping you could take your, uh, Malfoy to his bed. He fell asleep."

Dilly's face wore an even more intense look of concentration. "Dilly will do as Mistress bids."

Hermione frowned. "I'm _not_—" She closed her eyes and tried not to get irritated with the elf. She couldn't help her mindset. "If you could please take him to his room?"

The elf nodded and snapped her fingers. Both she and Malfoy disappeared. Hermione breathed a sigh of relief and stood up so she could stretch her arms above her head. She twisted side to side a couple of times and then bent down to touch her toes. It was the same stretches she always did in school to loosen up after a night of revising.

As she came back up, she noticed that her robes were gaping open. Hermione pulled the two sides together and realised that it was open past the edge of her bra even. How had that happened?

She went to button it back up, but the buttons weren't there. They'd simply vanished, string and all. Hermione frowned. That would have explained the strange looks she'd gotten from Malfoy all evening.

Hermione swallowed down the discomfort and the heat on her cheeks. There was nothing to be done for it now but to move forward. This was probably more of Mrs Weasley's handiwork. The woman must have started going through her closet now and putting jinxes on her clothes.

Tomorrow, she'd be prepared for any Weasley invasions.


	4. Chapter 4

Granger was back in his library again. This time they had set up at a proper table. He conceded to this since the stationary writing surface seemed to have put her in a better mood.

He also noticed that she was wearing a turtleneck under her robes.

She must have finally realised the show she'd given him all the night before. He pursed his lips to keep from smirking and went back to reading through the diaries for any information they might have missed. It was easier now that everything relevant was in green.

"Granger," he said as he flipped through Godwin's first diary. "Can you summarise from your notes what we've covered so far?"

She seemed startled at his mild tone, but she pulled the scroll from the day before out and looked it over.

"Eadburga gave me this evening a gift. A large square cut—"

"Bloody _summarise_, Granger! I don't want to go over every word again! It gave me enough of a headache the first time."

She threw a crumpled up parchment at him and he watched as it sailed about a foot to the right of his head.

"Ooh I'm scared. Short version, woman."

Granger glared at him a bit more fiercely than before and held the scroll up again. "Bloody Eadburga gave me this evening a bloody gift. A bloody large square cut emerald—"

Draco stood up and slammed his palm on the table. "Give me the fucking scroll!"

He snatched it away from her with the superior reach of his long arm before she could hide it away again and read over it. The thing was an exact transcription of every word he had said and she still had time to scribble notes in the margins.

Draco flopped back in his chair and rested his forehead on his fist, the parchment still clutched within it and scratching his skin.

"Can't you just write something short. Simple and short. I just wanted to go over it again, not read the whole sodding thing."

He threw it at her and scrubbed his face with his hands. "I don't have time for this. Mother's dying and this is the only fucking way to save her!"

Draco swept his arm over the table and sent all the books crashing to the floor. Parchment balls scattered and a full inkwell tipped over and spilled. The black ink rolled to the edge of the table and dripped onto his mother's favourite carpet.

He kicked his chair away and started pacing in front of the fireplace. He felt like he was in a cage. If there was only time to fly. To race across the sky and forget everything, everyone. Purge the rage of standing still when he should be pelting toward a cure for his mother with every fibre of his being.

"Guiscard Malfoi was given an emerald necklace from his wife to pass to their sons," Granger said quietly.

Draco stopped and listened as she continued.

"Her family was descended from a man named Gwayn but they died out so her husband would carry on their family line. She said Winterborn sons would be doubly blessed."

_Father was a Winterborn son, _Draco thought. _He was born just after midnight on the winter solstice. _

"Courtenay Malfoy received a visit from what he called the Green Knight on Christmas day but he dismissed it. The Knight challenged him to meet him a year to the day, but Courtenay didn't listen. His wife died from the 'green sickness' just before the new year, 1552."

Draco turned around and watched as Granger reviewed her notes.

"I found the diary of a monk from 1553 who said that the plague had lasted a year but that it had ended. The victims all had green liquid in their lungs and coming from their mouths just like the one today."

He walked back to the table and sat down, but she remained standing. She didn't seem inclined to acknowledge him in any way, but as long as she was condensing that monstrosity of a parchment scroll he didn't care what she did.

"Just after Christmas in 1553 Courtenay leaves Malfoy Manor on horseback to find Lud's Church and he never returns. But we know that somehow despite his disappearance, the plague stopped. The monks said by March they were burying the last bodies."

"The ring came back to the Manor," Draco muttered. "Courtenay died."

"Yes, that's a fair assumption," Granger conceded primly. Her manner was back to that of a cold and distant schoolmarm. "His son Godwin took the necklace and threw it into the Black Lake because he didn't want to die like his father or let anyone else die like his mother had."

She paused and looked that part over again. "He was only eleven. And he was left as the head of the family. No brothers or sisters, aunts or uncles."

"There wouldn't be," Draco sighed. "For as far back as I've ever read, the Malfoy's have only ever had a single son. No daughters. And no other sons unless the heir dies."

"That's horrible!" Hermione said. "No one's _ever_ had siblings?"

Draco shook his head and started picking up the books from his earlier tantrum. "No siblings ever unless they were adopted."

Draco raised an eyebrow at that but said nothing. She had a right to think badly of him. It was the popular thing to do after the war.

"How many brothers or sisters do you have, Granger?"

She laughed, and he felt that the tension of his earlier rant had eased. "I don't have any either. I always wanted them. At least a sister or something. But I suppose I have the Weasleys. And Harry. He's the best brother a girl could wish for."

Draco made a derisive sound through his nose. "I'm sure."

Granger finally sat back at the table with a haughty look on her face. She waved her wand and started siphoning the ink back into the bottle and sent the parchment scraps flying to the bin in the corner.

Then she suddenly clasped her hands in front of her theatrically and fluttered her eyes. "How can a woman help loving a man who's so earnest, so brave, and so true!"

She pursed her lips. "Is that what you wanted to hear me say, Malfoy? I love Harry for himself. Not for what the _Prophet _ever said about him. Not because he's famous. Not because he killed Voldemort."

"You're the one who mentioned him. I don't want to hear his name in my bloody house."

Granger sighed and looked away. "I worry that we're never going to get along."

"And we don't need to. We need to cooperate long enough to find out what the bloody hell this fucking Green Knight wants with my mother so I can kill him."

She turned clearly exasperated eyes back to him. "Malfoy, please tone down the language. It's lazy. You swear more than Ron and I can't stand hearing it."

"Don't care!" Draco burst out, flinging up one of his hands. "You're here to research what this thing is and what we have to do to stop it."

She was quiet for a while as what he said sunk in. It wasn't really true, what he'd said. He didn't honestly know what he'd do when Granger finally solved the riddle and left. When she didn't need him anymore, or the books in his library. But his pride refused to let him bend and apologise for his behavior so he tried to pretend that nothing had just happened.

"My father is Winterborn," Draco said calmly. "I suspect that he received a visit from this Green Knight and ignored it like Courtenay did."

"But he'd _know!_" Granger cried. "He read the diaries. He knew what would happen."

Draco shrugged. "Maybe not. No one had seen the necklace in centuries. Maybe he assumed that there would be no danger without it. Or he simply couldn't do anything about it. He _is_ in Azkaban."

"He could have told someone!" she said indignantly. "Could have warned the Ministry."

Draco locked eyes with her over the table and waited for the moment that her naive mind would understand. He did see it. The moment when she realised that no one would have believed the word of a former Death Eater in prison for war crimes. The very idea of a Green Knight who brings plague and death behind him was absurd. Perhaps she even remembered that Lucius wasn't allowed any contact with his family unless it had been approved by the Auror's office.

He slumped down further into his chair and stretched his legs out under the table. One of his booted feet slid up against Granger's calf and she started at the intrusion but didn't move. Interesting.

"Why didn't he tell us about this yesterday?" she asked. "We were right there and he just spouted cryptic nonsense."

"It wasn't too cryptic," Draco argued. "We figured most of it out."

She nodded. "I don't think I can get permission for you to visit him again quickly enough to do any good. I had to call in favours at the Auror's office."

Her small nose wrinkled in distaste. "I generally refuse to use my 'war hero' status for nepotic purposes, but this was important." Granger caught his eye again. "Do you think he'll admit to it this time? That he was challenged by the Green Knight?"

Draco shrugged. "Probably not to you. I'll write him a note."

He reached over for a fresh sheet of parchment and ink. Granger handed him her quill. It had a fresh, clean scent that made him curious. He ran the feather under his nose and sniffed deeply.

"What did you put on this?"

"I had it in my hair," she mumbled, her cheeks pinkening as he watched. "It's probably my shampoo."

Draco didn't say anything. He had to concentrate on what needed to be done. He dipped the quill in ink and drafted a quick letter to his father, asking for any and all missing details about the Green Knight. He was very specific to ask if his father had been challenged by the Green Knight and when that might have been.

"It's only two in the afternoon," Draco said. "If you hurry, you can get into the prison and see him before they close to visitors."

Granger came around the table to retrieve a scroll that had rolled under his chair and stuck it into her ever-present beaded bag. Draco held the folded letter out to her.

"Make him tell you the truth, Granger. I don't care if you have to rip out his toenails to do it."

She wrinkled her nose. "I hope it doesn't come to that."

Draco felt one side of his mouth lift in an involuntary smile as he looked up at her from his chair. "Malfoys are stubborn. You never know what you'll have to resort to if you want him to talk."

She gave him a rather arch look. "I think I've figured that out by now, and I have my own tactics."

He wondered if those included driving someone insane with proximity and scandalously low cut robes. If she was going to see his father, he certainly hoped not.

And he was keeping the quill.

* * *

><p>Hermione was balancing a paper cup of tea from the office in one hand and several rolls of parchment cradled against her chest with her other arm when she Floo'd through to the foyer at Malfoy Manor.<p>

Even though it was only seven in the morning, she was already in a sour mood because she discovered that Mrs Weasley had come into her flat and stolen all of her knickers. Every single white cotton, Marks & Spencer's set of knickers she owned (which was a considerable amount since she didn't get to the Muggle world much these days) was gone. She couldn't figure out just how the witch had managed to get past all of the wards. Hermione could only conclude that she would never see the depths of Mrs Weasley's magical talents. This was the woman, after all, who defeated Bellatrix Lestrange and created a quite fabulous magical clock.

It was like dealing with a subtler version of the Weasley twins.

Hermione had expected to come across some sort of flimsy lace replacement somewhere, but apparently Mrs Weasley's mind was even more twisted and Hermione had to wear nothing at all. She dashed off a quick note to her mother asking for a couple of packs of knickers as soon as possible. She couldn't think of a sufficient excuse as to why she didn't have any, but she did add that it was an emergency. Who had knickers emergencies anyway? Her mother would think she was mad.

So here she was, walking right into Draco Malfoy's house with not a stitch on under her robes aside from her bra. She prayed that there would be no untoward magical accidents like had happened the other day when she'd probably flashed him for half the night. Perhaps if she told the poor woman that she was stuck inside with Draco Malfoy all day instead of walking around the Auror's office in front of Ron she would stop her terrible matchmaking attempts.

Hermione was about four metres from the library doors, still juggling tea and parchment and trying to figure out how she'd open the door to the library when the giant doors swung open on their own. She shrugged and kept walking. One of the elves must have seen her dilemma and decided to help.

Malfoy looked up at her from the worktable and glared.

"Who the hell do you think you are, Granger? You don't just barge into my private library like you own it! I thought even Muggles had better manners than that."

Hermione blinked and carefully set her cup of scalding tea down on the table where she had sat the night before. It was going to be another day filled with super-human efforts on her part to remain polite and marginally professional. "I didn't open the doors. One of your elves did."

"The elves wouldn't open the doors for you unless I told them to do it," he scoffed.

"Well, they did today," Hermione said with some asperity. Couldn't he wait to attack her until after she'd at least sat down?

"Dilly!" Malfoy yelled.

Hermione had always been under the impression that toffs were above things like yelling and screaming swear words at people unless Malfoy was somehow just an exception to the rule.

The little elf appeared instantly with her tiny ears flapping around her head. "Master called Dilly?"

"Who opened the door for Granger there?" he snapped.

Dilly looked at Hermione with an expression similar to the one she had worn the previous evening. Something a bit like fear perhaps, or confusion. Maybe both.

"No one opened the door for Mistress. They opened because she needed them to."

Draco rolled his eyes. "Mother is in hospital. Your mistress isn't here."

Dilly pointed at Hermione, which couldn't have surprised her anymore than it did and said: "Our new mistress."

Hermione was still scrutinising the elf when she heard a wet spluttering sound coming from Malfoy. She turned to see that his face had taken on an unappealing sort of grape colour.

"She is _not _your mistress! My mother is your only mistress," he screamed at the elf. "How dare you disrespect her, Granger."

She opened her eyes wide and stepped away from the table. "What did I do?"

Malfoy had never looked quite so . . . _incandescent_ with rage as he was now. The Ministry should probably look into letting him out occasionally for the sake of his mental health. He'd obviously gone round the bend by this point.

"You_—_" he curled his hands into a claw in front of him. "You convinced my elves that you're their mistress. They're taking orders from you now."

Hermione breathed out a disbelieving laugh. "I did not! I don't believe in elf slavery. Why on earth would I _ever—_"

Malfoy started pulling at his hair with his hands. "Who knows why you do anything, woman. You're bloody nuts."

She frowned sharply. "Pot, kettle."

Poor Dilly still didn't seem to know which way to turn or who to go to. "Master is angry with Dilly?"

Hermione stumbled a couple of steps over to the creature and fell to her knees next to her. "No, Dilly. I think your, uh, master is just overwrought right now. I'm sure he's not angry with you—"

"Fucking furious!" Malfoy howled from behind her. "But at you. I'm going to kill you, Granger. And then I'll go to Azkaban—"

She tuned him out to speak to the elf again and placed what she hoped was a comforting hand on the elf's shoulder. "Maybe you should go back to the kitchens for a little while and I'll talk him down into being just his regular berk-like self."

The elf stared at her again with disbelieving eyes. Malfoy was still swearing sulphurously and stomping like an elephant, smashing things and sweeping down papers from the noises. Hermione made a shooing motion with her hand and the elf slowly turned invisible, still eyeballing her sceptically as she went.

Hermione mentally counted to ten and tried to ignore Malfoy as he ranted about her 'scheme' to convince the elves she was their mistress so she could set them free. She would speak to him without resorting to silencing spells, ropes, or brute force.

She pushed herself up off of her knees from where she had been beside Dilly and turned to face him. Malfoy was still clawing at the air with one hand and pacing. He looked ridiculous. Her anger evaporated as she tried hard not to laugh outright at him.

"Malfoy, I'm sorry you thought I was bursting in on your private time in the library."

He spun to face her and stopped moving. At least he was listening.

"I walked toward the doors and they opened on their own."

Malfoy narrowed his eyes as if she was somehow trying to trick him and he took a couple of steps forward. The look in his eyes made Hermione a bit nervous, but she fingered her wand and kept talking.

"I didn't do anything to your elves. I didn't tell them anything. If you know _anything_ about elvish magic, you'd know that someone can't just do that. Elves are bound in service to families. I read that back when I first started S.P.E.W. in school."

He stopped approximately two feet in front of Hermione and she squeezed her wand inside the holster again.

"Why the _fuck_ do my elves think that you're their mistress?" Draco hissed at her, his head darting into her personal space.

"Do I look like I know!" Hermione cried.

She threw her hands up and turned away from him. "Frankly, I don't even care why they think that right now because we have things to do that are infinitely more important than figuring out your _house-elf_problems," she said over her shoulder.

Hermione walked over and sat down in the chair she had occupied the night before and started organising the space. She didn't care what he was doing. He could help her or stand there like a raving madman. She picked up her cup, took a sip of tea, and pulled a quill out of her bag.

"Any time you'd like to begin," Hermione said briskly. "We're wasting precious time."

She purposely did not follow his progress back to the table or watch him sit down. Nonetheless, she was keenly aware of his presence and tried not to react when he reached into her space to snatch a piece of parchment and her quill. Then he grabbed her cup of tea.

"That's my tea, Malfoy. Get your own!"

He flashed his eyebrows at her above the rim as he gulped half of it down. "Irritating isn't it? People taking liberties like that."

Hermione pursed her lips. She was of half a mind to call Dilly for another cup just to irk him, but she didn't want to disturb the creature simply to play Malfoy's game. This had to stop.

"Would you like to hear what your father had to say or do you want to waste more time?"

He sat up a bit straighter at that and motioned for her to start. He was still clutching her paper cup in one hand.

Hermione sighed and grabbed the parchment she'd taken notes on the day before. She was sure he'd want a summary again. No point in going word for word since he didn't want to hear it and she didn't want to deal with his moodiness anymore.

"I didn't even need to give him your letter, by the way. He answered every question I asked him. Although I did hand him the letter at the end in case you had a private message."

Malfoy turned his head slightly. "He wouldn't have done that. He must have been lying. I'd think he wouldn't play games when it's Mother's life at stake—"

"I don't think he was lying," Hermione said suddenly. "He even said that he _couldn't _lie to me."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Malfoy barked. "My father lies to everyone. Well, he at least always plays with words a bit."

"He's your father. How would I know?"

Malfoy growled and he looked like he was going to eat his fist for a moment but restrained himself at the last moment. "This is all adding up to a conclusion I don't want to consider, Granger."

Hermione raised her eyebrows. He didn't say anything for a moment and started biting his fist again in thought.

"Just tell me what he said."

She pulled the parchment toward her again and condensed her notes:

"I asked him if he was challenged by the Green Knight and he said yes. Then I asked him when that was and he said it was approximately fifteen months ago."

"Fifteen _months_!" Malfoy exclaimed. "Why the— He—" He curled his hand into a fist again just above the table. "The challenge time has passed then!"

Hermione nodded. "It seems to be the case. I asked him if he would be willing to challenge the Green Knight if I got him a special furlough from Azkaban but he declined and said that as head of the family it was _your_ duty to challenge the Green Knight."

Malfoy was calmer about that than she had anticipated. Perhaps he had already figured for himself that this would be the likeliest solution to their problem. It made more sense now why Lucius had given his son the ring and therefore status as head of the family.

"I asked if he knew what or where Lud's Church is. He said it's in Staffordshire. I suppose I'll have to find a map where we can get more information on specifics."

"Did he say anything else?"

She bit her lip and shuffled the parchment around. "Nothing relevant."

Malfoy narrowed his eyes and reached forward to snatch the scroll from her before she could tie it back up. He scanned the page quickly and she could see the moment he got to the very end of the brief interview with his father.

"He said I'm a stupid, careless boy who will shame the Malfoy name with my antics? What the hell is that supposed to _mean_! What did I do between my visit with him the other day and now?"

Malfoy crumpled the parchment into a ball and chucked it over his shoulder. Hermione grabbed her wand and summoned the parchment back. She hid it in her bag so he couldn't do something stupid like set it on fire.

"I told you it wasn't relevant. What I do think is important is the timing of the challenge expiration. That's when the plague started. I'd even hazard to guess that it was the very day when Robert Cleary found the necklace in the Black Lake. We thought that the necklace was what started the chain of events, but it was well before that. It started with the challenge to your father."

He grunted quietly in acknowledgement and looked away. "So is that all you have? More speculation? We could do that all day."

Hermione pulled three books from her tiny beaded bag and laid them on the table with a low _thunk_ sound. "I have books."

Malfoy twisted his mouth on one side. "Joy. More useless bloody books."

"These aren't just more books, Malfoy. These are about the Green Knight."

He leant forward, intrigued despite himself. "All those after months of nothing?"

Hermione frowned. "I didn't know to specifically research the Green Knight. Besides, these came from my own library at home. They're Muggle books."

She was surprised when he still reached for one despite the admitted Muggleness of them. He started flipping through one until he found an illustration.

"That's about what Courtenay said the thing looks like," Draco admitted. "Bloody huge green man with an axe and what."

Hermione nodded. "That is a story written in the fourteenth century called Sir _Gawain_ and the Green Knight."

Malfoy's head shot up and he turned rapidly back to the cover. "Guiscard's wife was descended from someone with that name. That can't be a coincidence."

"It was originally written in an old West Midlands dialect, does that—"

"Guiscard settled near Tuxford in 1086," he said, cutting her off. "Then the family moved to Wiltshire and built this house sometime in the fifteenth century."

"Then the timing is right," Hermione muttered. "It's likely that one of your own family members, or someone close to them, wrote Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. To what purpose, I don't know. But the connections are coming together."

The lines of Malfoy's body had started to slacken and he slumped a bit in his chair. The tension and anger in the room seemed to fade, and Hermione felt more of the easy speech from the previous evening between them.

"I need to say before I tell you anything else that I'm trying to help you as much as I'm trying to help the plague victims. I don't have any ill intentions toward you or your house elves or anyone. Do you believe me?"

He was still for a moment, then he nodded and studied his fingers, clasped together on the table. "Yeah. I've known you for years, Granger. You may be sly, but you've never been malicious. And I suppose you couldn't have done anything to the elves."

"Thank you," Hermione whispered. That'd probably be the closest she ever got to an apology from Draco Malfoy. "I also want to tell you that after I saw your father yesterday, I went directly to the Minister's office and gave him an update. I received permission for one request with the other request pending."

Malfoy raised one eyebrow. She wished he wouldn't; it made her feel so nervous.

"I asked for access to all of the books that were removed from the Malfoy family library. And they'll all be delivered here by Aurors in about thirty minutes."

He sat up straighter in his chair at the news. "Even the Dark ones?"

She nodded. "Every single book that was confiscated. You can't keep them, of course, but we can look at them for as long as we need to do so."

Malfoy tipped his head to the side and studied her. "And the other request?"

Hermione smoothed her robes down with sweaty fingers. "That is still pending. I—" She swallowed hard. Why did this make her so nervous? "I asked the Minister for a temporary commuting of your sentence in the event that you must challenge the Green Knight."

Malfoy stared at her and in the silence the ticking of the clock on the other side of the room seemed deafening. "Why would you do that?"

She lifted her head defiantly. "Because I know that you're the only one who can stop this."

"But I might _die_!" he cried.

"You're the only one who can fix this," she argued. "You know that you are. There's no other choice."

"No choice," he whispered. "That's what my father told me when I received orders to—" Malfoy fell silent. "Everything in my life seems to be a matter of 'no choice'."

Hermione hesitated for a moment, then stretched her arm across the table and placed her hand on top of his clasped fingers. His very skin seemed to jump at the intrusion but she didn't move. She knew that there was no going back from what she had done, but she hoped he wouldn't outright reject her gesture of purely human comfort.

"Mal—_Draco_," she said in a low voice, "You won't be alone and you'll be doing the right thing this time. I promise. You won't ever look back at your time on this, I don't know, _quest_ and say that you were ashamed of what you did."

Hermione squeezed her hand around his. The look in his eyes was reminiscent of a deer in headlights. "I'll be with you and help you every step of the way. I won't leave you to do it alone."

There was several seconds of intense, awkward silence. He stared directly into her eyes, and despite the fact that he didn't have a wand she still shivered at the thought that he could be reading her every thought. His thumb moved then and caressed the pad of her little finger.

Hermione felt a hot sort of flush go through her as he did it again. Draco kept his eyes locked with hers, and she felt compelled to look right back at him or somehow lose face in the strange game he was playing. When his fingers turned and swiped her palm she jerked and forced herself to pull her hand back slowly.

"We should check to see if the books have been delivered yet," she mumbled.

She made a show of organising her space again. She pulled out another quill and set it to the right of a fresh stack of parchment. She twiddled it a few times to smooth the feathery end down. When Hermione finally ventured a glance at him, Draco was still staring at her.

It was going to be a long day. 

* * *

><p>"So Granger," Draco said as he tried to roll the ideas around in his head yet again. "You're saying that I'm going to have my head chopped off?"<p>

It was now three o'clock, and she was slumped down over the table in front of him, propping her head up with one hand. She closed her eyes and swiped her fingers over her them briefly before answering.

"It doesn't mean that you're going to have your head chopped off. In the story he—"

"But I'm paying for what Father's done now," Draco growled. "Gawain listened and went to the Green Chapel at the appointed time. Remember Courtenay? He never came back! He had his fucking head chopped clean off, didn't he?"

Draco felt panic clutching his chest. It reminded him of the near constant state of fear in which he'd spent his sixth year. He ran his hands through his hair and squeezed near his temples. After dodging Dumbledore, the Carrows, _and_ the Dark Lord . . . surviving the end of the war without a stint in Azkaban . . . this was how he was going to die. His head cut off by some mythical green man.

"I know what you're doing," Granger said with a sigh.

Draco felt her fingers overlaying his own. She had come around the table whilst he was thinking about his possible death and dismemberment. He looked up at her face as she was pulling his hands off the sides of his head. It was a sort of dreamy out-of-body experience as he watched her set his hands down on his knees. He could hear her voice as if it was far away.

"You're getting all worked up about something that might not even happen! You aren't Lucius Malfoy. I don't think you'll have to pay for his mistakes in this. From what I can discern from the story and if everything written is true, the Green Knight is a benevolent creature."

He snorted quietly and averted his eyes. "But you don't _know_, do you? You don't know what happened to Courtenay. No one does. He just—just _died_ one day, far away from his son, his home."

Draco turned his eyes back to Granger. She was kneeling next to him now, her eyes brimming over with compassionate tears. It wasn't right that she should feel that way about him. He hoped it wasn't pity. He couldn't handle that now after everything. Then he comforted himself with the thought that she probably wept over birds that fell from their nests and kittens who were stuck in trees. He was no different to her.

"There's a saying in the Malfoy family, Granger. 'cherish thy son ere it die and there be no more'." He allowed the silence to stretch, the meaning to sink into her brain. "When I meet the Green Knight and die, it means the extinction of a family that has lasted for over a thousand years. There are no cousins to take our family seat. We will just stop."

Numbness crept over his senses. He could see Granger clearly but his limbs were lethargic and unresponsive. Draco felt the urge to touch her cheek. To kiss her. Who else had the empathy and humanity of Hermione Granger? But his hands wouldn't listen so he didn't do anything at all.

"Check on Mother for me, please," Draco murmured. "I think I need to rest for a while. Then we can—we can pick up where we left off. Make plans."

He saw Hermione stand up from the corner of his eye and he felt her delicate fingers touch the top of his head briefly before her shoes _clack-clacked_ across the room and back to the main Floo.


	5. Chapter 5

Hermione barely made it through the Floo to her flat before she broke down.

She knew that Narcissa and Draco Malfoy weren't perfect people. They had done bad things. Narcissa had sneered at Hermione on many occasions and made her opinion known about 'that girl' being in her house. But it didn't mean she wasn't human . . . someone's mother . . . someone's wife. To have lived through Voldemort's invasion of her home, his takeover of her husband and son, only to die of some mysterious plague with no cure but for her only son to ride off to face the challenge of a spectre that could _kill _him. And after that, extinguish his entire family line. Millenia of Malfoy dead in a single stroke. Despite everything, it was wrong.

Hermione curled up on her couch and sobbed into her hands. She felt the soft pressure of paws on her knee and the rumbling purr of Crookshanks as he came to investigate. Hermione tipped her face up and let him sniff her and rub his muzzle against her chin before licking at the wetness on her face with his rough tongue.

"I'm sorry, Crooks. I shouldn't upset you like this. I'm just strained, and I needed a break."

She wrapped her arms around him, despite a protesting _mrow_, and cuddled him against her chest. Things were easier before she became involved in the research for the Green Death. It was supposed to be an easy assignment. She would be helping people. And she wasn't even terribly important in the scheme of events. No one expected that of the three researchers looking into the situation that the footnote from a book in the Hogwarts' library would lead _her _to anything conclusive. Miriam and Roger were investigating the heavy stuff: communicating about fungi and rare curses, digging into the oldest archives at the Ministry, working directly with the Department of Mysteries even. Hermione wanted to be no one. A grunt. That was the way she preferred it so she could work her way up on her own merit. Yet she found it when they did not. In a way, she had proven herself. Or perhaps it was just dumb luck. In either case, she wasn't particularly proud of her accomplishment despite all the lives they would be saving. No thanks to Lucius Malfoy, of course.

Hermione set Crookshanks down on the sofa and got up. She went to the mirror above the mantle and smoothed her hair into something serviceable before casting a charm to remove the redness from her face. A simple handkerchief blotted away the wetness.

It felt a bit ironic when she thought of all the time she'd spent crying as a young schoolgirl because Draco Malfoy had said something horrible and hateful to her and here she was crying over him yet again. But now her tears were _for _him, in sympathy. Hermione shook her head against silly thoughts and gave Crookshanks a kiss on top of his head. She rubbed her finger against his cheek and felt a smile tug her lips when he pushed his mouth and teeth against her skin.

"I have to go back now. There's still so much to do. A lot of planning, you know, for knightly quests." 

* * *

><p>When the Ministry told him that he would have to give unhindered access of his family library to a researcher, Draco remembered being beyond furious. He had recollections of ranting about dirty hands pawing through his family's treasured books and damaging them. The image he'd had in his mind was of a random Ministry oaf with giant hands shredding the books, throwing them around, and laughing down his nose at the Malfoy family.<p>

It was fortunate for everyone that the Ministry had sent Hermione Granger instead.

At first, it was almost worse that they had sent her. There was history between them. Even his home seemed to feel embarrassed by her very presence. Then it wasn't so bad. She was quiet and didn't say anything demeaning. Quite suddenly one day, her visits became something Draco looked forward to three times a week.

As he watched her now and the great care she took with his family books, he felt two emotions struggling to break the surface. She opened each book, carefully smoothed each page out and then just as carefully closed it and set it in a neat pile beside her.

_It isn't so bad being stuck at the Manor with her here_, he thought. But he knew that she would never stay beyond the time required to finish this business with the plague and Green Knight.

Draco watched her absently reach for a slice of pear left over from their meal and nibble on it with one hand whilst reading with the other. Her hand was an ivory spider on the page with delicate, nimble limbs roaming from word to word.

He tried to go back to his book, but her presence distracted him. She had a scent he knew. It was on the air and he could almost taste it. He didn't know why she made him so suddenly mad with lust and . . . emotion.

Hermione looked up at him, offered a close-lipped smile, and went back to the book she was reading. Draco shifted down in his seat and tried again to concentrate on the words in front of him. Had she cast a spell on him? Was that why he felt things so strongly? He admitted that she was moderately attractive. He'd seen prettier, even outright beauty before that would beat her in a contest. But somewhere along the line what had started as an interest became a deep-seated hunger.

Draco rotated his ring a bit with the side of his thumb. He wondered if the ring had something to do with it all. The behaviour of his elves. The door opening on its own; they only opened for family! Then there were his feelings to consider. Basic attraction and admiration became so much more so quickly.

He closed his eyes. Too many things to consider, really. He would have to research through the diaries privately for the solution. Or ask permission to contact his father. It probably had something to do with using her wand. If a connection was forged then he was sure his death would free her from it. He sighed.

"Listen to this!" Hermione suddenly crowed.

Draco's eyes popped open and he watched as she excitedly read from a page in an old book about pre-Merlin magical artifacts.

"According to the book here, the Green Knight has been known by several names throughout history. He is an entity of neutral affiliation who was accidentally summoned for the first time during the Roman occupation of Britain. He was then bound and trapped in an emerald by a Roman named Walganus. Then the legends later say that the entity would appear to a Winterborn from the family he served in order to challenge them '_lest impure heart and mind combine to destroy the legacy of the noble Walganus, friend of the Green Knight_'."

She closed the book and kept her finger in it to mark the page. "I think that explains almost everything we needed to know about him. We've already determined that your father was the Winterborn spoken of, whom the challenge was issued to originally. And from what I've read in other books, a Winterborn child was often sacrificed by the ancient druids for the good of their tribe. It seems like the two traditions merged at some point along the line. Probably during the Roman occupation."

"I don't know how you can be so chipper about it," Draco said with a frown. "You don't have to face him. Neither does my father."

Hermione's eyes were glossy and over-bright in the candlelight. He squirmed in his chair and watched as she leant forward to speak: "Draco Malfoy, I know that you aren't perfect. You aren't Harry, and even Harry isn't _Harry_. At least not the way everyone thinks of him these days. But you aren't evil. You love your mother and your father, and love is something that evil doesn't know."

"You don't have to be evil to be impure though, do you, Granger?" Draco flicked a bit of lint off of his trousers. "You could just be a selfish bastard, and I think I'd qualify. There's more than black and white in this world. If we were Egyptian, I'd probably even say that Ammit wouldn't leave my funeral hungry."

She gasped. "That's an awful way to think of yourself!"

He rolled his eyes. "You think everyone's good, Granger. I'm surprised that you didn't petition to have the Carrows' Kiss commuted to helping house elves in need."

When he looked again, he could tell that he had pissed her off this time. Fire lit her eyes.

"You make me sound like an idiot or just really naive but I'm not. I know the difference between good and evil. And yes I know that there is more than just black and white. Look at Dumbledore! He did terrible things in his youth, he was friends with _Grindlewald_, and he manipulated Harry into killing himself. Yet everyone remembers him as the epitome of good in the wizarding world. And it's simply because he had the reputation for being good. If the world knew what he had really done behind closed doors . . ." She trailed off, fist clenched. "I'd fancy a word or two with that man, honestly. But he did what needed to be done for the sake of everyone. It's confusing and moralistically there are so many grey areas. But you can be better. If Dumbledore did all of that, then there's no reason why you can't go before the Green Knight and pass whatever challenge he gives you."

Draco stared at her for a moment. He was pretty sure he understood the gist of what she was trying to say, but he wouldn't make it easy for her. "You ramble a lot, Granger. That didn't make any bloody sense at all."

She pursed her lips. "You're just being obtuse."

Draco shrugged. "It doesn't matter now. I'm still going. No comparisons to Dumbledore or long-winded speeches on the nature of good and evil will change that."

She sighed. "Let's just keep reading. We need to know as much as possible before you go."

Draco closed his book and set it aside. "No. I don't think so. I'm not going to spend what could be my last days on earth reading books about the Dark arts and magical artifacts."

She opened her mouth to speak, but at that moment an elf appeared next to her with a _crack_.

"Post owls have arrived for Mistress." The elf held out a silver tray with a small parchment scroll and a large, bulging yellow package that barely fit on the tray.

Hermione looked at the tray as if it were capable of biting her. She cast a nervous glance toward Draco and then took the items from the elf.

"Um, thank you, Dilly."

The elf disappeared with a curtsey and she slapped the envelope and scroll down on the table.

"Malfoy, I think you need to talk to your elves. There's a serious problem here. And these owl posts! They're addressed to my flat but they came here!"

Draco felt calmer this time, now that he had some idea of what might have happened. "I wouldn't be too worried about it, Granger. I'll work on finding the problem when I return from Lud's Church."

He twirled his ring idly and watched as Hermione ripped into the package only to hastily close it back up and stick the contents in her beaded bag. She stole an anxious glance at him and patched a smile over her face as she did so.

Then she picked up the scroll and broke the seal before reading. Her lips thinned and compressed, but whether it was a smile or a frown Draco really couldn't tell for sure. It seemed to be an expression which hovered somewhere between the two.

"The Minister took the situation before the Wizengamot and held a special session this afternoon. They voted to approve Kingsley's request to give you a special furlough with conditions so you may meet the challenge of the Green Knight and end the plague."

She cleared her throat and flicked her eyes at him briefly before reading on. "There are conditions. You will be given your wand back, but it will have a Trace on it so that all activity may be monitored during your furlough. A locator charm of some kind will also be placed on your person so the Auror's office will know where you are at all times."

"Pure joy," Draco sneered.

"But Draco," she gasped suddenly as she read further ahead. "If you succeed in the challenge and end the Green Death, the Wizengamot has agreed to commute your sentence to probation for one year, with a weekly wand check until the probationary period expires."

Her eyes were shining when she met his gaze. "You won't be on house arrest anymore!"

Draco returned her smile to the best of his ability. He didn't have the heart to tell her that it wouldn't matter in the end if he died on probation or died on house arrest. He knew that he wouldn't live to enjoy it. 

* * *

><p>"If you look at this map of Staffordshire, Lud's Church is here."<p>

Hermione's slim white finger pointed to an infinitesimally small dot near where it said Back Forest.

"It's part of the Peak District National Park, so beware of Muggles. If you run into a tourist or cottager or something—"

"I know how to deal with Muggles," Draco said sharply.

From the look on her face, it seemed as if she had to think for a moment whether he had meant that as a threat or reassurance. Her shoulders relaxed slightly, so he assumed she realised that he wouldn't hurt any Muggles he found. _What a small comfort her good opinion is_, he thought sourly. She could have made it less obvious that she was scared he would start blasting away.

"The Portkey will take you directly to Lud's Church. You need to know that it's not an actual church or chapel, but a sort of chasm in the rocks. Everything is covered with green moss and moulds. It can be quite slippery so don't attempt to climb them unless you must."

Draco stared at her disdainfully. "Do you really think I'm going to randomly climb rocks?"

She shrugged and turned her face aside. "I remember having to tell Ron when we were travelling during the war not to climb— well, it doesn't matter. I just thought it was a boy sort of thing to do."

He smirked. "Forgot that you're used to dealing only with boys, Granger."

Draco watched as she pursed her lips and went immediately back to the map.

"I've not been given a return Portkey so unless the Auror coming with your wand has it, I'm assuming they expect you to Apparate back here when your task is finished."

"Or they don't expect me to come back at all," he added.

She frowned up at him. "Please stop saying that. This is hard enough as it is. I feel like I'm sending you to your death armed only with a wand and a map."

They had spent the entire night before reviewing books on the Green Knight and spells that could assist him, despite Draco's insistence that they stop. She kept going and eventually fell asleep on the table. As he looked at her now, despite her trip to the Ministry and back for the Portkey and final instructions, her hair was still frightfully mussed on one side from sleeping at the worktable. With the sleep-mark of a book corner still on her cheek and bleary eyes, Hermione seemed unusually vulnerable to him.

"I'm sorry," Draco said simply. "There's just no point to me in creating false hope. I'm the sacrifice and when I die Mother will be cured and— hell, everyone in the plague ward at St Mungo's, too. That little girl you showed me. She'll live."

Hermione's eyes were troubled. "She passed away two days ago."

Draco pressed his lips together firmly. "I'm going to do something good for once in my life. Something that isn't selfish or _cowardly_," he spat. "I know everyone thinks I'm a coward, but . . ."

She stopped leaning against the table and came around to take his hand again. He wished she'd stop. He felt like her latest project. He jerked his hand away and she stopped in front of him, deflating as if the wind was taken from her sails.

"Don't pity me!" he yelled. "I don't fucking want it. I just want you to look at me as if I wasn't evil. I don't want you to wonder if I'm going to go mad and kill all the Muggles I see. I won't. I'm not. I never would." He bit his lip to keep it from trembling. "I can't."

Hermione put her hands on his forearms. "I'm not pitying you anymore than I would anyone in your situation now. I don't think you'll kill any Muggles. I don't think you'll kill anyone. And maybe that is what's going to save you." She squeezed her hands and ran them down to link her fingers with his. "You aren't as bad as you think you are. You're not irredeemable, or the Ministry would have locked you in Azkaban with all the rest."

Draco turned his head away. "Only because I'm a coward."

"Bravery isn't always doing the obvious thing, Draco," Hermione murmured.

He heard footsteps coming down the hall, echoing against the marble floor with sharp taps. Granger was suddenly in a flurry. She ran over to the table and picked up a rucksack, shoving the map inside.

"That's the Auror," she said frantically. "Dilly thought to pack you a few things to eat and some comfort items for your trip."

"Master," a house elf named Derwin croaked, "a man is at the library door. From the Ministry. Should Derwin let him—"

"Just a moment," Hermione said quickly to the elf. She was poking through the bag as if checking that everything was there. Then she pulled a handkerchief from her pocket wrapped around something small and seemingly hard.

Hermione walked over and tucked the cloth in his hand. It felt like it was wrapped around a river stone.

"That's your Portkey," she said hurriedly. "You know what to do with that, of course. And here is your rucksack. Dilly packed it—"

"You already said that," Draco said gently. "Don't be nervous. I have to go now. This isn't your fault."

She rubbed her hands together as if she didn't know quite what to do with them. "I'm frightened," she admitted.

Draco nodded. "Me, too."

No use lying about anything this late in the game.

She glanced at him, then the door, and as if she had built herself up to it she stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. "Sorry, I know I have Muggle germs, but I thought— for luck."

Draco grabbed her by the cloth at her hips and pulled her tightly against him. "I don't know what Muggle germs are."

He wrapped his hand around her neck and pressed his lips against hers, pushing in until he felt her yield to him and kiss back. As far as kisses went, it was fairly chaste, and it didn't last long since the Auror was now banging on the door.

"Granger—Hermione, can we do that again if I come back?"

She blinked a few times and nodded her head. "Yes. No. Um, of course. I think."

Fondness for her bubbled within him and pushed his panic away for a moment. "I'll hold you to that. All of it."

Hermione smiled tremulously. "Godspeed, sir knight," she said. It seemed like she was trying to make a joke, but her quivering lips made it fall flat.

She turned away and started shuffling papers needlessly. Her shoulders were trembling. Draco breathed in deeply to quell the panic and lifted his hand to the elf. Derwin opened the door with a snap, and the Auror standing suddenly framed in the doorway was Neville Longbottom.

"Hullo, Malfoy," he said quietly.

He walked further into the room and pulled out Draco's wand, sheathed in midnight blue leather just as it had been the day he turned it over to the Ministry.

"Ron wanted to come, but he was uh, well, a bit too gleeful I suppose. I thought I'd volunteer for the job."

Draco nodded. It didn't surprise him about Weasley. Longbottom had always been soft-hearted, even when they were children and before Hogwarts. Neville was the type to save a pixie laying on the ground. That had always made him laughable to Draco's set.

Longbottom walked closer to Draco and tapped the wrist restraint with his own wand, causing it to fall to the floor with a soft _thump_. Then he noticed that there was someone else with them and turned in surprise.

"Hermione?" he questioned. "Is that you? What are you doing here?"

She pinched the candle on the table and turned around from the papers she was sorting to face him.

"Neville!" she smiled. Her face was red and blotchy. Draco could see that even in the shadows. "It seems like I haven't seen you in weeks."

Neville frowned. "Are you okay?"

She nodded. "Yes I've just been working too hard. My research project is over now it seems." She was randomly snatching papers off of the table and stuffing them in her satchel. "I can't stay to visit, though. I have to get back to the Ministry and make my r-report."

Her voice caught on the last word. Draco averted his face from her so he didn't have to see her walk away.

"We can catch up later, Nev. Tell Ron and Harry I said hello!"

She stepped over to the library Floo and disappeared there instead of going past Neville to use the main one. Half of her papers were still scattered across the table. Draco bent down to pick up a battered Muggle paperback copy of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and studied it in his hands.

"Malfoy, what did you do to her?" Longbottom said sternly. "She's a mess. Why was she even here?"

Draco frowned as he thumbed through the book. He should have paid better attention to the story when she told it, but it was too late now. He ran his finger over where she had written 'Property of Hermione Jean Granger' in neat, right-slanted writing on the inside cover that was slightly more childish than her current hand.

"She's been coming here for months to research the plague. She found the answer. That's why you're here. So I can go and take care of it."

When he glanced up, Longbottom was assessing him openly. "What's going on?"

Draco smirked. "Didn't your superiors tell you? I'm off on a knight's quest to slay the dragon."

He threw the book somewhere toward the table and turned to fully face the other man. "Just give me my wand and I'll be on my way. I have a job to do."

Longbottom held the wand back. "What's wrong with Hermione?"

"Can't you tell? She's devastated to see me go."

He rolled his eyes. "If I find out you did something to her, Malfoy, dragons will be the last thing you'll have to worry about."

"Just give me my wand," Draco repeated wearily. "I don't have to talk about this with you."

"Tell me what you did to her!" Longbottom said sternly and louder than before. "She was crying and shaking—"

"Because she doesn't want me to go!" Draco yelled. The other man was silent and staring. Draco reached over and snatched his wand away from Longbottom's suddenly limp grasp. "I know it's hard to believe or even imagine, but she actually feels bad because I might die today."

He reached into his pocket and pulled out her handkerchief. He ran his thumb over the prettily embroidered green 'H' in the corner, twined around with vines and leaves. Draco wondered if she was the kind of girl to do that sort of work herself or if her mother might have bought them that way. He peeled the corners back against his palm and pressed his finger to the river stone inside.

Draco felt the pulling, hooking sensation just behind his navel, and the last thing he saw was a dumbfounded Neville Longbottom standing in his library.


	6. Chapter 6

_So bury fear for fate draws near . . ._

Whoever had made the Portkey was playing a horrible joke.

Draco shoved the stone and handkerchief in his pocket before taking in his surroundings again. He tried to find the large, rocky crevice Hermione had told him about, showed him pictures of, but there was nothing. He stood in the middle of what looked to be moors; no large rocks in sight except for a lone tower jutting crookedly from the ground like a white, moss-covered finger pointing toward the sky.

And the sky . . . it looked different from when he'd left. It was still fairly early in the morning when Longbottom arrived with his wand. Draco reached down his side and fingered the wand in its' sheath. It felt good to have it back, even with conditions.

He felt disoriented. Dizzier than the Portkey warranted. It was then he realised that he had forgotten his watch. If the sky was anything to judge by, though, it was quite close to nightfall. Wrong place, wrong time. Draco didn't know how that had happened, but he figured he would try to find a dry place in the tower to spend the night before going out to look for the Green Chapel when it was light again. Better than being lost on the moors.

Draco walked toward the tower. It wasn't too far in the distance and seemed to be abandoned. The roof was missing in patches and probably hadn't seen human occupation in decades. Once he came closer though he realised that the door seemed sturdy enough and was made of iron-bound oak.

He pushed against the door and it yielded easily, swinging inward on silent hinges. It made him wonder if there was someone living in the tower after all.

"Hello?" Draco called. "Is anyone here?"

To be on the safe side, he pulled his wand out and held it low in front of him. No one answered so he kept walking, _Lumos_ the very first spell he cast with his beloved old friend. The wandlight was dim, but he could see one foot in front of the other. There was another door up ahead, and this one had the distinctive flickering of firelight coming from underneath.

Draco knew now that someone must live there. He stood straight and rapped twice on the warped door. A shadow moved and the door opened. Standing inside the doorframe was an old woman, hunched and twisted under a tattered shawl. Her face seemed almost drawn inward, except her button nose which appeared pert and very interested in him. She looked up at Draco the best she could. It seemed difficult to raise her head due to the deformation of her spine.

"Owd be thee?"

Draco blinked. Was that even English? Did he fall in a hole? He'd never been to Staffordshire. He hoped this wasn't one of those horrible local dialects.

"I'm, uh, Draco Malfoy. Do you live here?"

The woman stared at him with brown eyes round as buttons. "Janetne!" she yelled, poking her head out and toward the tower stairs.

Draco heard a sudden clatter coming down the tower and he stepped back to stay out of the way. A beautiful woman with thick, chocolate-coloured hair flowing over her shoulders stepped into view. She didn't seem surprised to see him.

"I saw you wandering around out on the moors. I thought you'd come here," she said in a voice which had very little trace of whatever dialect the old woman spoke until she started gibbering at her rapidly using words that almost seemed like English.

The old woman stepped back and the younger woman curled her lip up into an appraising smile. "I'm Janet, by the way. My mother is Tilda. What's your name?"

"Draco," he said. He blinked several times to get his bearings as he was starting to become dizzy. "I was hoping to stay here overnight, but I thought it was abandoned. I didn't know people lived here."

The old woman beckoned him inside toward the fire.

"We don't have visitors very often," Janet said. "Sometimes someone gets lost out here, but mostly it's just my mother and I. Of course you're welcome to stay."

Draco stepped into the tiny room hesitantly. The fire was warmer than outside or in the draughty hallway. He tried to slip his wand back in the holster casually, but the sharp eyed old woman saw it and started firing off words rapidly again.

"You don't have to hide your wand," Janet laughed. "I'm a witch myself."

"I don't remember you from school. Did you go to Hogwarts?"

She shook her head. "No, I went to a small school in Wales, then I finished up at an academy in London on scholarship. We couldn't afford Hogwarts."

Draco looked around the tiny room. There weren't many of the usual accoutrements you would find in a witch's home. In fact, he saw several things that looked distinctly Muggle. "Are you Muggle-born?"

"Yes, my mother is a Muggle," Janet said neutrally. "That isn't a problem, is it?"

Draco quickly shook his head. "No, no. I don't care. I've just—well, I've never been in a Muggle's house before. Are they all like this?"

Janet cackled, and so did her mother. "I doubt it! We live out here, quite solitary. My mother isn't really keen on technology and the like. Electricity, telephones, television . . . so we live a simple life. Although I think when she found out I was a witch it was a bit of a blessing. I can make potions for her back pain, and I can cast a spell to soften her chair a bit."

Tilda hobbled off toward the fire and gestured toward the large pot hanging there.

"Are you hungry?" Janet asked. "We usually make enough to last us for a while. There should be plenty."

Draco was about to say no when he remembered Hermione's voice telling him to be kind and virtuous. It wouldn't poison him. He'd eaten worse for the brief time he was on the run with Snape.

"Yes, thanks," he said absently as he studied the walls. They were made of smooth white stone and hung all around with tapestries. One of the hangings caught his eye. It showed a large man with green skin, hair, and clothes swinging a giant axe into the neck of a kneeling man.

"What's this?" he asked Janet.

She came closer to where he stood and leant forward to see better in the gloom. "Oh! That's the Green Knight. He's famous this part of Staffordshire. They reckon the bloke who wrote it is from near here. That's just a cheap tapestry Mum got, though. It helps keep it warmer in here. The stones are so cold."

Draco watched Janet from the corner of his eye. She was more physically attractive than Hermione in many ways. They shared a similar nose, but the richness of Janet's hair and the perfection of her features made her ravishingly beautiful whereas Hermione was simply 'pretty'. Janet was taller with the type of willowy figure Draco most admired. But Hermione had much nicer breasts, he admitted.

He accepted a small bowl from Tilda, brimming with a hot stew that made his mouth water. He thanked her and sat near the fire where she had indicated. She took his cloak and hung it on a hook near the door.

Janet pulled up a small stool next to Draco and smiled with perfect, white teeth. Draco smiled back, close-lipped, and observed Tilda and Janet as he ate. He couldn't find fault with the fare; it was as good as any of the sturdy foods served at Hogwarts during his school years, despite the fact that he suspected it was full of weird bog vegetables and wild things.

He saw Janet watching him, but he ignored it. Tilda smiled at him as she finally sat down, her mouth surprisingly still full of teeth for someone so old. She began to eat her own meal and gazed at Draco fondly. It made him a bit uncomfortable, to be completely honest.

There was also a sharpness to Janet's eyes that Draco didn't like. She seemed too keen, too eager for him to stay the night. Maybe it was just loneliness, he didn't know. But he'd have to watch her closely and guard his wand well.

"So where were you headed to?" Janet asked, blowing on a bit of stew on her wooden spoon.

"I was looking for Lud's Church," Draco replied carefully. He watched them for a reaction, but other than a foolish looking grin Janet did nothing. Tilda rolled her eyes.

"There are so many tourists who go to Lud's Church every year," Janet said. "You wouldn't believe how many of them get lost on the moor like you did."

"I took a Portkey, actually," Draco sighed. "It should have taken me straight there but I wound up here instead."

Janet's lips twisted to the side in a contemplative frown. "That's odd."

Draco nodded and continued to eat his stew.

"Well, I know where it is. It's not far from here, but you can't Apparate. There's something about the stones here or something in the soil that interferes."

Draco lifted his eyebrows in surprise. "I've never heard of that before."

Janet shrugged and ate her last bite of stew. "It's a local thing. I don't expect you would. I only found out after I almost splinched myself. Anyway, we have some horses we use to ride into town for supplies. I can take you to Lud's Church in the morning."

"Don't you have a broom?" Draco asked with a wince. "I haven't ridden a horse in years."

Janet shook her head. "I had an old Cleansweep, but it broke. You'll be fine on the horse." She smiled at him in a way that was almost lascivious as she set her bowl down beside her. "Once you learn how to ride, you never really forget."

He watched her eyes twinkle in the firelight and said nothing. 

* * *

><p>Draco felt awkward riding out with Janet the next morning. Sometime during the night, she had crawled into his bed and things had gotten a bit heated, a bit interesting. But in the end, he had to disappoint and tell her no.<p>

Janet was quite attractive, and he was . . . intrigued. He didn't know what motivated her to do such a thing. Perhaps she just assumed that he would take advantage of what she freely offered. Draco wondered if there was ever a time when he would have, but he realised that he'd always held an emotional connection to be important; even with Pansy or Daphne back in school. Pansy had often joked that he wanted another mother more than a girlfriend.

Draco shifted uncomfortably in the saddle and waited whilst Janet jammed her left foot in her stirrup and swung her right leg over the back of the dappled grey mare she had chosen. He didn't like thinking about his school days. He squinted as he looked to the east where the sun was a hazy disc just above the crimson-edged horizon.

Tilda had seen them off with bowls full of oats and cream. Draco's stomach actually felt a little too full to be jostled around on a horse, but it was better than walking to Lud's Church. He wasn't sure what a kilometer was, but it _sounded_ further than a mile.

"How far is ten kilometers?" Draco asked as they started their horses into a walk.

Janet flashed her dark eyes at him, her expression sullen and pouty. "I forgot wizards don't use metric." She didn't speak for a moment, and he thought she'd leave it at that when she said: "It's perhaps six or six and a half imperial miles."

Draco turned his head back to watch the surrounding countryside. "Six miles isn't that much, I suppose. A kilometer sounded far."

She didn't say anything and Draco decided then that it would be a good idea to stop talking. Obviously she was still sore from his refusal the previous evening. He pushed his horse into a light canter and Janet kept pace easily. He just wanted this all to be over. It was possible that he had turned down his very last chance to shag before he died and he wasn't sure how he felt about it now. Other than awkward around the woman he had turned down. Perhaps even wistful that the opportunity hadn't been with someone else.

They rode toward the west, away from the rising sun, and he thought it was ironic. The druids had always said that the afterlife was to the west. But the barren moorland looked alien to him. He missed the hedgerows swatting his face as he raced his broom down the old village road back to the Manor when he was a young boy. Or skimming the surface of the River Bourne and letting the fish nibble his fingers as he floated lazily above them on his broom, clouds of dragonflies rising in the summer heat.

He wanted to die somewhere familiar. Instead there was scrub, heather, and endless hills shrouded in mist as he steadily rode forward like some bloody senseless Gryffindor.

Draco glanced to his right where Janet was keeping pace beside him and had for probably the past hour. What would he do when they got to Lud's Church? Could he just tell her to piss off? She probably wouldn't listen, the barmy witch. He wished he could just use the map that Hermione had so meticulously made for him, but most of it was of the actual rock crevice. The map of the area was still on the worktable in his library, so he'd need Janet's help for at least a little longer.

He leant forward in his saddle and pushed his mount into a proper gallop. Janet rode beside him for about ten minutes before she directed her horse slightly to the south. Draco could see large round grey boulders in the distance and the land to their right dropped off steeply. He hoped they were close now. He turned his horse to follow her.

Janet pulled up on her reins and slowed to a walk in order to direct her mount down a narrow path winding between two large boulders. Draco came behind, but his horse almost reared when it encountered a fat woolly sheep directly on the other side. Janet's ringing laughter followed Draco further down the path. He sent the sheep rolling across the grass with a flick of his wand until it met another sheep and they collapsed in a pile of limbs and wool.

Ahead of him, Janet moved her horse into a canter up the next hill and he followed quickly. They rode without incident for another ten minutes, dodging the occasional sheep or shaggy long-horned bullock.

Draco wasn't really watching where he was riding. His mind grew vacant as he contemplated all the things he hadn't done in his life. And all the things he had.

The sudden shrill scream of a horse sounded to the right, startling him from his maudlin thoughts, and Draco turned to watch helplessly as Janet's horse went down. The horse was more than fetlock deep in a hole and Janet rolled down a steep embankment, not having been able to catch her feet after leaping off and to the side. He could hear her scream mingle in the air with the sounds of the poor, wretched horse.

Draco drew his wand and immediately cast a summoning spell, but she was too heavy or his skills were too weak because she barely slowed down. He then attempted to levitate her, but again, his spell fizzled in the air whilst she rolled further and further away. He snarled and shoved his wand back in the holster. The embankment was too steep for the horse to ride down.

He could try to help her or let her die when she rolled over the edge of the cliff. Draco swallowed and jumped down from his horse. He would just have to deal with the other animal when he returned. He wished desperately for his broom. Why didn't he bring it?

Draco rushed down the steep hill as quickly as he could. Janet had reached the end and was fighting not to fall directly over. He walked more quickly, leaning back, until he finally lost his footing and skidded down the rest of the hill on his backside. Several rocks later, he was at the foot and near to where Janet had landed.

After he helped her up from the cliff, he'd send up some type of flare and be on his way. Perhaps this had all happened for a reason. Draco limped over to where Janet lay half on the cliff and half dangling over the edge.

"Help me!" Janet demanded. "Pull me up!"

Draco laid himself down right next to the edge and grasped her hand with his. "I'm going to lighten you so I can pull you up quicker."

Janet nodded while Draco fumbled for his wand. The position was awkward, but he didn't want to lose his grip on her hand. He finally pulled out his wand, but overcompensated and flung it out over the cliff. Draco watched it go sailing into the ravine below them. Which seemed to be the very same Lud's Church that he had been looking for.

When he looked back at Janet, her eyes were very wide. "The branch I was standing on, i-it fell away. Pull me up quick!"

Draco wrapped both hands around hers. "Put your other hand on top of mine," he instructed.

"I can't!" Janet wailed. "I'll fall!"

"You won't fall. I'm here. I'm going to pull you up."

Janet screamed as Draco tugged, and he could hear her feet skittering against the slippery side of the ravine. He rose to his knees, still holding her hand, and adjusted his grip before leaning back to pull.

"Janet," Draco panted, "I need your other hand. I can't do it this way."

She glanced down beneath her once again and looked him in the eye. "Don't drop me."

Draco shook his head. He was already winded, his hands slick with moisture and stinging from his trip down the hillside. Janet's other hand came up and he hooked his fingers around her wrist.

"When I say the word, push against the rocks."

Draco paused, gathering his strength. "Push!" he screamed.

He leant back, pulling, pulling. Janet's feet clattered against the stones. Draco could feel himself falling toward the edge, but he braced himself by widening his stance. He could feel her body rising above the edge. Once she had a knee close she pushed up against it and he pulled her body the rest of the way over.

Draco fell backward against the stones and grass and panted. He closed his eyes and scrubbed his face with his hands. It felt like the hardest thing he'd ever done.

"Are you okay?" he said, voice gravelly with strain.

She didn't answer him so he let his head flop to the side and opened his eyes.

Towering above him was a huge man, hair and skin green and wearing green armour. It could only be the Green Knight.

"Well met, my son," the Knight said jovially. "Come to challenge me at last, eh?"

Draco made the decision to get up not a moment too soon; a truly enormous axe cleaved through the air he had just occupied and embedded itself in the rocky soil.

"Are you going to fight, lad, or play tricks?" the green man rumbled.

"What could I possibly fight you with?" Draco asked desperately. He scanned the surroundings for a weapon and noticed that Janet was gone. _Good riddance_, he thought.

"Ah, such uncharitable thoughts don't become you, Draco," the Knight said.

Draco whipped his head back to face the Knight and forgot all about Janet. Apparently the man was a mind-reader, which would seriously hamper any type of planning. He would have to Gryffindor it.

The Knight threw his head back and chortled. "Hah hah hah! What a way with words you have!"

Draco tried not to think about it, to let instinct take him as he leapt forward and wrapped his hands around the beribboned handle of the massive axe. It was surprisingly easy to rip it away from the huge man.

The Knight continues to laugh, his voice echoing against the stones all around them and throwing it back a hundred times louder.

"Cut me, young one!" the Knight bellowed, striking his fists against his breastplate. "Cut me down and I'll be out of your life forever. You'll live and I will die."

Draco adjusted his grip on the axe, trying to balance the weight without tipping over. "I don't want to kill you. I just want you to fix them. Cure my mother. Cure the others. It's not their fault."

The Knight crossed his arms and planted his feet at shoulder width. "They were already marked for death," he said. "I only changed the process."

Draco narrowed his eyes. "What do you mean?"

The green man shrugged. "Some would die in accidents, some of long lingering illnesses, some suddenly. But all were meant to die. I'm not killing them and I can't fix them."

Draco dropped the axe from nerveless fingers. "I came all this way for a cure. For Mother. I can't go back a-and watch her die."

The Knight started walking in a half circle around Draco. "Then you came for the wrong reason. I thought you had honour. I thought you came to fulfill the challenge I made to your father."

Draco sneered. "Piss on honour! I'm here for my mother, and that's the only reason."

"Are you sure?" the Knight whispered in his ear, his cold breath fanning Draco's hair. "Could it also have been to win the affection of a certain woman?"

Draco pushed his hair back from his face, away from his burning cheeks. "Granger didn't have anything to do with my choice. I'm here for my mother, and you _will _give me a cure for her!"

The Knight stepped back now, arms open. "Then kill me. Come and take this cure. We'll see who is right and who is wrong."

Draco picked up the axe and swung at the green man. He dodged the blow easily. Draco admitted it was clumsy and fell far short of his goal.

"I will kill you if I have to!" Draco snarled.

He paced forward, backing the Knight against a large boulder. There was no where now for him to go. The Knight was at his mercy. He just had to—

Draco paused with the axe raised. The Knight wasn't attempting to fight back. He merely stood there waiting. Draco tried to pull up the image of his mother, sick with fever, pale-lipped, and exhausted. She would be better. Wouldn't she? He just had to kill this stupid Knight, and the curse would be lifted.

But what if it wasn't? Then what? Destroy the necklace perhaps? Kill himself along with it? What was he willing to do to save his mother?

He hiked the axe up even higher and prepared himself to deliver a massive stroke to the Knight, but he just couldn't do it. It didn't matter that Snape was not nearby to clean up his mess this time. Granger would probably be as elated as much as she would be disappointed.

His mother would die.

Draco dropped the axe and fell to his knees. "What can I do?" he asked. "Are you going to kill me now? Am I the sacrifice?"

The Knight stepped forward, and the axe vanished before Draco's eyes.

"I won't kill you, young master Malfoy. Not today or on any other."

Draco gazed up at him in astonishment. "Then why am I here?"

The Knight took off his helmet and shook dark green hair from his face. His eyes were large and soulful-deep. "You were here to accept my challenge, which you did. And you passed it."

Draco blinked. "I don't understand. None of this makes any bloody sense. I should have listened when Granger read that book to me."

The man smiled warmly at him. "Everyone tries trickery first to win, but it's never needed. No matter how prepared, the challenge is different for everyone. For you, it was coming here prepared to die for someone you loved. It was offering mercy, even when you aren't normally so inclined. You even treated Janet and Tilda as equals despite their heritage."

"So why can't I save my mother? Why is she going to die?" Draco said, trying desperately to hold back tears at the thought.

The Knight reached under his breastplate and pulled a chain out over his head. Attached to the chain was the emerald pendant.

"That was at the Ministry," Draco said quietly. "How did you get it?"

"It wasn't theirs, it belongs now to the Malfoy family. Centuries ago, it belonged to my dear friend Walganus when we fought together against the Celts."

He dropped it in front of Draco. "Keep this in memory of him. And in memory of what passed here between us today. It will protect your family from harm. Pass it to your sons, or daughters even."

Draco picked it up and ran his thumb over the glassy surface. "Malfoys don't have daughters."

"You will now," the Knight said quietly. "The curse is lifted and your family will now thrive as it was meant to do centuries ago. And I am finally free of my own curse."

Draco looked up at the man in confusion. "I only understand half of this, you know."

The Knight chuckled. "Some mysteries will always remain thus, my lad."

"Can you at least tell me what happened to Courtenay?" Draco asked suddenly. The loneliness in Godwin's diary had haunted him and he wanted to know what had happened.

"Courtenay came to challenge me, but he failed," he said softly. "His grief was too strong, and his mind— twisted."

The Knight suddenly plucked Draco's wand from the air. "You can go home now, to those who love you. Take the necklace in your right hand and touch it to anyone with the plague and they will be cured. Your mother will live."

"What about the horse up there? And Janet? I need to at least take care of that horse. Put it down or something."

The Knight's smile grew calculating, almost teasing. "You don't want to know what happened to her, but your concern is entirely unnecessary I promise. The horse as well. Forget them."

Draco frowned but said nothing. He still felt confused and lost in his own mind, but he wasn't going to waste anymore time when his mother would be cured.

The Green Knight raised his hand. "Farewell, Draco Malfoy. Good luck in your life's journey."

Draco raised his hand awkwardly, not sure if he wanted to slap the man or kiss him. The Knight's eyes were cresent slits of amusement as he faded away, and deep rumbling laughter sounded around Draco again.

He raised his wand and concentrated on Apparating to St Mungo's. Suddenly nervous to be alive when he had been so sure he would die.

It would be a while before he saw Granger again. Hermione, he reminded himself. He wanted a few days to rest and contemplate just how he was going to tell her what had really happened that night he used her wand. A lot of reading would be required to find out how exactly it had happened. And preparation time to practice spells for when Potter and Weasley found out that Hermione Granger was now his wife.


	7. Epilogue

Epilogue

Hermione felt the air around her shift and she lifted her head in puzzlement; the sepulcher-like stillness of the Ministry archives had been breached.

It had been a good six months since she had sent Draco Malfoy off to what she presumed was his death and she had worked hard to put the entire thing behind her. But her guilt plucked at her constantly and made this almost impossible; twice as guilty, really, when she considered that she also felt mildly relieved at not having to reveal just how close she had gotten to Draco during those hazy days researching the plague. Anything that reminded her of Draco and her stomach soon twisted into knots. Harry and Ron generally avoided her from some sort of confused compassion aside from the stray pat on the shoulder by Harry for her not to take it so hard. That it wasn't _her_ fault. Even Mrs Weasley had finally left her alone.

In a way, Hermione was mourning the potential. The spark - however unwelcome, unwanted, and unexpected it had been - was . . . sensational.

But today the whispers filtering through the stacks were distracting her. There was something in the air. Something going _on_. From the covert glances she was getting from her co-workers, Hermione knew that it somehow had something to do with her.

So she waited, pushing papers around on her desk and only half paying attention to the thick volume of Goblin law on her desk until it found her. Or the official from the Wizengamot did.

"Miss Granger?"

Hermione turned her head quickly before she could remember to be nonchalant. "Yes, what is it?"

The nervous-seeming bald man standing at the side of her desk tapped his fingers against his hip. "I've been sent to bring you to a special session of the Wizengamot."

This wasn't at all what she had been hoping for. There was some part of her that believed Draco might swoop into the Ministry one day like Snape, coldly state that he was in fact alive, and ask her out for dinner. There would hardly be a special session for his return.

Hermione wrinkled her brow. "A special session? For what?"

The man's refusal to make eye-contact put her on edge as much as his damp, sweaty palms rubbing against his robes did. "I haven't been given leave to say. But you must come with me immediately. It's urgent that you are there."

Hermione sat straighter in her chair. Only instinct told her not to touch her hip to check that her wand was safely at hand. Something was happening and she didn't like it one bit.

"Well, if I must I must. But I am quite busy you know," she chided him softly.

The man turned as Hermione stood up. She knew that was a lie. She had barely gotten any work done in months. They didn't even bother giving her assignments anymore and she had become one of those Ministry creatures that she used to hate; seemingly hanging on with no purpose or use like a barnacle on a ship's hull, yet still collecting a pay packet at the end of the week.

Since the man was walking ahead of her, she felt it worth the time to slip her wand into her sleeve holster and slide a fake wand from WWW out of her bag and into the holder on her hip. Hermione glanced around but they were walking behind the stacks toward the door and no one was nearby. The entire thing was giving her a bad feeling, even though she kept trying to rationalise to herself that she had not done anything wrong. She thought perhaps it was the guilt that had clung to her all these months that made it so easy for her to imagine that she was being lead to her execution.

As they left her department, she noticed an Auror walk in and close the doors behind them. Hermione suspected that he would be rifling through her desk while she was . . . wherever she was going to be. The thought of someone pawing through her work items made her neck hot, but she felt slightly satisfied by thinking of the jinxes the man would have to deal with if he poked around too much.

There were very few people in the Atrium for this time of day and only two in the lift as she and the nervous balding man who had _still _not introduced himself stepped in.

"Where is everyone?" Hermione asked.

"Wizengamot declared a half-holiday two hours ago. Most people've gone home already. Just a few stragglers about."

No witnesses, he may as well have said.

"I didn't hear anything about a half-holiday!" Hermione exclaimed. "Why wasn't my department notified?"

The man kept his face toward the front and shrugged.

Hermione glanced at the other two people the best she could without actually turning her head. They were Aurors. Ones she didn't recognise. And they were watching her.

As she anticipated, they followed the Wizengamot messenger and herself off of the lift to a very distant room that was starting to remind her of what Harry had told her about of his own experience just before 5th year. The Aurors followed approximately three metres behind them, taking every turn and entering the large theatre-like room along with Hermione.

Her heart pounded loudly in her ears. Hermione could feel it almost leaping from her chest. What exactly had she done?!

There were nine members of the Wizengamot seated in front of her. Not the full number, but enough to cause a problem. The shrimpy, balding man beside her guided her toward one of the seats up front where the accused generally sat. Hermione stared at the seat for a moment, wondering if she should give her fake wand away yet by reaching for her real one or playing dumb. After a moment she decided to sit in the chair with her hands clasped and the sleeves of her robes loose down around her hands. In this way at least the chair restraints would be difficult to utilise and her wand was at her fingertips, secured as it was inside her sleeve.

"How can I be of service to the Wizengamot today?" Hermione asked, forcing her voice to be calm and loud enough to carry across the echoing chamber.

The members of the Wizengamot who stood before her, few whom she actually knew by name, stirred as if a breeze had passed over them. Eventually one with a slightly larger hat than the rest stood up and faced her. His head was also balding, like the man who had brought her here, only the pomposity on his face completely eclipsed any trace of nervous display.

"Miss Granger, we've called you here today to help us with a simple legal matter. We were hoping that you would be amenable to giving us some of your time?"

She tipped her chin up and looked at them over her nose, hoping that this would lend an air of confidence to her person that she hardly felt. "You're asking then? It seems to me as if you're using quite a bit of persuasion for someone asking for a favour."

Conversation buzzed very softly behind the man. He cleared his throat. "It's a sensitive matter and we wanted to ensure that someone such as yourself was given every courtesy."

Hermione pursed her lips. "I'm sure," she said crisply as she internally tried to channel McGonagall's legendary reserve. "Courtesy."

For the first time, the man seemed unsure of himself before shaking it off. "As you may have heard, the Malfoy family is currently extinct."

Hermione blinked. Not remotely what she had expected, if she had expected anything at all. "I hadn't heard that Lucius or Narcissa Malfoy were dead."

He ran his tongue under his upper lip before speaking. "Not so much yet, but the family is almost gone. Narcissa Malfoy is dying and her husband gave up his place in the Malfoy family when he sent his son off to die in his stead."

Hermione's hand jerked and almost brushed against her wand, but prevented herself from doing so at the last moment. "So what does that have to do with me, Mr . . . ?"

"Lord Gavol," he said primly, as if affronted that she didn't know who he was. Hermione had to restrain the urge to roll her eyes at him.

"We called you here," he continued "because we have discovered that there was an unknown, uh, family member when we were attempting to file some . . . papers."

Hermione frowned and continued to stare at him, still wondering why this involved her remotely. Papers indeed. She knew what the stupid little man was really referring to and it made her ill. They had successfully plundered the wealth of almost every other Pureblooded family in Britain so far. The Malfoys were one of the last remaining hold outs and they had been attempting to rectify that for months before Draco had disappeared.

"Wonderful," she said acidly. "The Malfoys aren't extinct after all. Are you finished? May I leave?"

Lord Gavol became flustered and sputtered for a moment until an older woman with her hair scraped back severely into an iron grey bun came out from behind him and pushed him none too gently toward a seat with the others.

"No, you may not!" she cried in a ringing tone. "You will tell me how and why you married the prisoner Draco Malfoy and you will do it now before I'm forced to have you put into Azkaban for aiding his escape!"

The shrillness of her voice echoed in the chamber and Hermione was at a complete loss for words. They were mad, obviously, but also quite convinced that she had somehow pulled the wool over their eyes and not only helped Draco escape, but they seemed to think they were—

"Ridiculous!" Hermione shouted. She stood up from her seat and noticed that the Aurors standing near the doors came to quick attention.

"I am not married to Draco Malfoy. I don't know what put the thought into your heads. As for helping him escape—" Hermione choked for a moment on something that was an absurd cross between laughter and tears. "He's dead! You said it yourselves. He died trying to save the wizarding race from the Green Death and you should be thanking his parents and blessing his memory instead of trying your damnedest to _steal the money he left behind_!"

A rippling sigh went over the small group of Wizengamot members at these words, and some shifted to the others before settling back into their seats, faces sternly blank and facing forward. The woman who was now representing them drew herself up taller in her maroon robes.

"You will speak to us and admit your crimes or we will be forced to use other methods."

She extended her hands toward the Aurors and curled her fingers toward her palm. The two hulking, silent men came closer. One of them pulled a vial of colourless liquid from a pouch at his belt and held it determinedly in his grip. Hermione paled and sat back down, still careful to keep her arms from the reach of the chains.

"I'm not lying," she said softly. "I'm not married to Draco Malfoy and I didn't help him escape. He's dead."

"He isn't dead," the woman said firmly. "His whereabouts have been unable to be determined. Even if he were dead we could still trace his wand to his location, but it has also disappeared."

Hermione felt her heart come up into her throat. The sensation of losing breath at that news was quite abrupt, but she tried to contain it and not give herself cause to hope.

In front of her, the woman's lips and nose curled into a sneer. "As for your marriage, we performed a magical trace to determine the name and status of any remaining Malfoy relatives and you were listed there _as his wife_ so don't continue telling lies because we already know the truth."

Hermione scoffed. "I think I'd know if I were married. And I certainly wouldn't marry _him_! I mean, I only kissed him once—" She froze, knowing she shouldn't have admitted to even that much.

"So you had a relationship with him?" the woman pressed. She walked out from behind the stand and came closer to the railing that separated Hermione from the Wizengamot. "How long did you hide this from the Ministry? As a prisoner, we have the right to know all of his personal relationships and how _dare_ you use your position here to free that—"

"I did no such thing!" Hermione shrieked. "One kiss before sending a man off to _die_ is not a crime. I had no prior relationship with him and I don't have one now!"

"When did your relationship with him begin?" the other woman continued obtusely. "I will have the Aurors administer Veritaserum if you don't start telling us what we want to know."

Hermione laughed, low and harsh. "So you want me to make things up or do you want me to tell the truth? Apparently your ears are full of cotton wool if I have to keep repeating myself. If you want me to tell you what you _want_ to know then I suppose I'll need to think about it so I can make up a really good story for you. I don't have a lot of experience, but I'm sure I can spin some of the juicy bits in there for you."

The woman nodded and the Aurors seized Hermione and quickly forced the Veritaserum into her mouth. She would have spit it at them, but she didn't have anything to hide.

So she sat there for what seemed like hours and answered their ridiculous, invasive questions in a toneless voice. Hermione detailed the entire timeline of events from when she was first given the case to every last detail of every meeting she could remember with Draco Malfoy. As she talked, she could see the Wizengamot members frowning and muttering amongst themselves. She hoped they realised how positively stupid they were being to detain her.

"You're still hiding something," the woman with iron grey hair muttered, pacing at the railing. "You admit to letting Draco Malfoy use your wand while he was actively under house arrest, yet you claim that you had no relationship with him. You hadn't disarmed him in a duel, nor had he disarmed you, so what other reason could there be that you would trust him with your wand?"

The muttering grew louder and several heads nodded in agreement at this line of questioning.

"I didn't really think about it that way at the time. I just wanted results."

The other woman pursed her lips. "I don't believe it. Give her another dose of Veritaserum!"

The Aurors spread their hands and admitted to only having had the one vial.

The woman clenched her fist and pounded the railing. "You leave us no choice, Mrs Malfoy—"

"I'm _not_—"

"Don't interrupt! Because you are a Ministry employee and you knowingly and willingly, by your own admission, gave your wand to a prisoner of the Ministry you are hereby terminated and furthermore will be locked in Azkaban prison for one year—"

"That's ridiculous!" Hermione interjected. "I can see losing my job, but Azkaban—"

"You can stop this at any time," the woman said sharply. "Just tell us what you're hiding from our questions. The whole truth."

"I am!" Hermione cried, tears trickling down her cheeks. She considered clutching her wand and blasting the hag across the room, but didn't want to tip her hand just yet. "I don't know what else I can say or do to convince you that I'm not Malfoy's wife and I didn't help him escape."

The woman summoned a thick roll of parchments from the air and smacked it down into Hermione's lap. "Then sign these and we will press no charges."

Hermione unrolled the sheafs of parchment and read over them quickly. She blinked and looked back up at them. "I can't. I won't. I'm not even his kin so whether I signed or not would have no bearing, but I'm not taking anything away from him if he is alive. He doesn't deserve it. I won't declare him legally dead if he's not."

Hermione crumpled the papers and flung them behind her. "I refuse to steal from anyone. I don't care what they've done in the past."

The Aurors came forward and pulled Hermione up by the arms, frog marching her toward the double doors when they suddenly opened. Harry stood there, framed in the flickering torchlight of the hall behind him. Ron, too, stood at his side with his wand drawn.

Hermione sobbed in relief and hung her head down. She wouldn't be locked away and forgotten in a rotten old cell in Azkaban to be tortured by the prisoners she'd helped put away. Not if they were here. At least they would _know_.

Kingsley, hidden previously behind Ron and Harry, stepped into the room and strode quickly to the front. "I don't recall a meeting of the Wizengamot today," he said mildly.

Lord Gavol actively flinched, but the woman with iron grey hair stood her ground stolidly. "Travis, Beeton, continue your duty. Take her to Azkaban."

Kingsley turned his head. "Don't move a muscle."

For the first time, Hermione saw doubt on the faces of the Aurors beside her. They hesitated for a moment and released her at the same time by the merest flex of their fingers. Harry and Ron wrapped her in an embrace and she stood between them, her knees still trembling when she thought about how close she had come to prison.

"You don't have the authority to override the Wizengamot, Minister," the woman sneered.

"No," Kingsley admitted with his quiet, rumbling voice. "But the full Wizengamot's not here, Sabine, so I feel confident that you didn't have all the votes needed to convict Hermione of . . . whatever you convicted her of considering that over half of the members are still at home today."

Sabine was silent, her gaze rage-filled and deadly. "You haven't heard the end of this, Shacklebolt. Justice will be served."

He stooped to pick up the ball of parchment that Hermione had thrown over her shoulder moments before. He was reading it and only half paying attention to the woman. "I'm sure justice will be served — in a full hearing, not some half-cocked inquisition served _à la_ Umbridge."

Kingsley waved them away and turned back to Harry, Ron, and Hermione. Leading the way out of the chamber, Kingsley walked them back toward the lift. He met Hermione's eyes over the parchment in his hands. "I think you have some explanations to make, Hermione Granger. Or should I say Mrs—"

"Don't!" Hermione shouted, putting her hands up frantically to stop him from saying anything further. She nervously glanced at Harry and Ron and bit her lip. "I'm not. I told them over and over again. I'm not."

Kingsley frowned and read the papers again, ushering them back out through the doors. "According to this you are. And I need an explanation."

"What's going on?" Harry asked. "What aren't you saying?"

He gestured to Hermione. "I don't know what this was about today, but Hermione didn't do it. She couldn't have done anything wrong."

"Yeah!" Ron said quickly. "Hermione doesn't break the rules. Except if it's important. Right, Hermione?"

She smiled at them weakly and pushed a curl out of her eyes. "I only broke one rule, and it was for a good cause." Her eyes met Kingsley's stern gaze. "And it wasn't _that_." She pointed at the crumpled parchment he was reading. "Just something little. I had the situation under control. And the results were perfect. The plague wouldn't be over if it hadn't."

"What'd you do?" Harry urged. "Kingsley'll stand up for you. Won't you?"

Kingsley was reading the third page of the parchments in his hand. "If I feel that the ends justified the means," he muttered.

Hermione met his eyes and strictly avoided looking at either Ron or Harry. "I let Malfoy use my wand."

Kingsley's eyebrows flew up as Harry and Ron broke into a clamour behind her.

"_Will_ you two stop!" Hermione hissed "It was necessary at the time. There were enchantments on the journals in the Malfoy family library and I couldn't break them. They only responded to Draco so I had to give him my wand or we never would have figured it all out and _more_ people would be dead. I did what I had to do."

"You should have told me, Hermione," Kingsley admonished sternly. "You knowingly gave your wand to a Ministry prisoner."

She clenched her fists and fought the urge to scream, instead pressing her lips firmly together. "I know. But it worked. The plague is over. Malfoy's d-dead." Her lip trembled. "They kept saying he wasn't, but either way he's disappeared. And what does it matter anyway? He got a full pardon."

Kingsley frowned and started walking toward his office again. "Not exactly," he admitted. "I didn't feel it necessary to pardon a dead man. But if he's missing, well, he'll have broken his contract with the Ministry in that case and he'll go to Azkaban."

Hermione stopped dead in the hallway. Ron almost bumped into her and Harry had to swerve to prevent collision as well. "You can't!" she cried and turned back to Kingsley. "After everything he probably did to stop the plague and you'd have him locked away?"

"Hermione—" Harry started, putting his hand on her shoulder. She shook it off angrily and pressed toward Kingsley again.

"You don't reward someone for stopping the worst plague in wizarding history by—"

"There's no proof," Kingsley said in his deep, soft voice. "No one knows what happened to him after he Portkey'd to Lud's Church. There's no evidence he did anything at all. He vanished; everyone who had the plague except his mother died and he hasn't been seen since."

Hermione could barely see for the tears in her eyes. It was so unfair! He'd tried to help, she knew it. He wouldn't leave his mother to die knowing that he could stop it.

"Hermione, I know you have this thing— well, you like to help the underdog. And I know you somehow convinced yourself that Malfoy—"

Hermione spun on her heel and punched Harry hard in the chest. She continued to pummel him until Ron stepped in to pull her back.

"He tried!" she yelled. "He tried, I know he did. He wouldn't have just left his mother to die. He knew he could have been killed and he still went. He's just as good as you are, Harry! And you're calling him an underdog?!"

She sniffled and yanked her arm out of Ron's grip. Somewhere in her mind, Hermione knew she was overreacting, but she squashed that voice firmly and wiped the tears from her cheeks.

"I'm going home. It's a half holiday."

Harry and Ron looked like they wanted to stop her, but Kingsley put his hand out so they let her go.

Hermione spent most of the rest of the week at home in her flat curled up around either Crookshanks, a cup of tea, a book, or some combination of the three. She ignored Ron and Harry when they came pounding on her door and hexed Ron in the face when his head popped up in her fireplace without notice.

She had done a lot of thinking during that time - and researching when she'd gotten over the shock of losing her job and possibly her freedom once a proper trial was set up. Her supervisor had sent a curt note, sloppily folded, through the Floo releasing her from employment at the Ministry. Couldn't have even sent an owl or stuck their head in the fireplace. A note tossed in the Floo lacked a personal touch and it made Hermione grit her teeth in suppressed irritation at being dismissed in such a manner.

Several things started clicking into place for her as she researched Wizarding marriage laws and traditions, making her more jumpy and irritable than before. Hermione had no recollection of a ceremony or any type of exchange that would be common amongst Muggles, but the Wizarding world worked differently. From the odd problem with her owl posts going to Malfoy Manor - they _still_ went there! - to the sudden deference from Malfoy's house elves, she figured that something must have happened to bind them into some sort of marriage.

She never had found a reason for the owl posts and had changed over to have everything directed to her office, but now that she was unemployed how would she get her letters? Hermione frowned and rubbed a finger down her nose in thought, trying to get back to the main Problem.

From Malfoy's reactions, she didn't think he was responsible for the elves and post problems. Why would he? Despite their brief farewell kiss and the strange tension of the last few days she had seen him, he'd never shown much inclination towards her before. It didn't make sense that he'd want to sully his pristine bloodlines or risk actual prison time for an unwilling Muggleborn bride.

Hermione snorted into her cup of tea. A Malfoy marrying a Muggleborn. What a joke.

She nibbled a biscuit and twirled the feathery end of her quill over her nose in thought. The only real question was what event triggered it? Common law marriages happened often amongst old Pureblood families, but had fallen out of favour over the past two centuries when Muggle marriage ceremonies started to look appealing. Victoria and Albert's grand gesture had rippled across two worlds and she supposed that it made sense in a time of power and posturing to make things seem as big as possible to keep the awe of the masses. Old Pureblood families were, in reality, little different from Muggle nobility on that point.

But before all of that, things were simpler. She had found several instances of couples using each other's wands and therefore binding themselves into marriage. Her neck had prickled at that until she noted that there was real intent involved and it was never accidental. Hermione knew that she never had any intention of marrying Draco Malfoy at any point! But the fact of it remained. She had performed a spell similar to what the Ministry had cast to trace Malfoy kin and very clearly her name was listed on the parchment connected directly to a Draco Abraxas Malfoy by a thin line of black ink, who was just under a Narcissa Black Malfoy - the space beside her strangely blank.

Somehow, some way, it had happened. There was no going back and no divorce. Hermione had heard rumours about Blaise Zabini's mother and her seven husbands. It made more sense now that she had looked up the laws about Wizarding marriages for herself. At the time Hermione had thought divorce would surely have been easier than poisoning them all and wondered why the woman would have bothered if she could just get a separation of some sort.

If Draco was alive then she would be bound to him until they were both dead. A missing husband was probably worse than an unwanted one in the grand scheme of things. Or she could sign the paperwork the Ministry wanted her to sign. Hermione frowned at that thought. It was tempting to just give them what they wanted and the entire mess would be over. Her common law marriage to Draco Malfoy. She'd have her job back - maybe - and wouldn't go to prison.

Aside from her issues with declaring someone legally dead so that the Ministry could confiscate their lands and property, Hermione felt compelled to be truly honest with herself about her situation on ink and parchment:

_My job is/was rotten. Starting at the bottom intentionally and working my way up through the ranks, while noble and idealistic, in reality is mind-numbing and unlikely to succeed. Yes, I'm considered a war hero; even in a more modern Ministry that matters little unless you mean to use that status to move ahead. It is still nepotism at its finest and if you don't have solid connections you will never go anywhere of value. I don't have solid political connections other than other war heroes and Order members and I don't feel comfortable using that to get ahead in my career. Even Arthur Weasley still totters along exactly where he was before the whole war even happened. Well-respected, well-liked, but ultimately on a path that is going nowhere with little pay to compensate for the drudgery and no ability to make the changes that desperately need to be made._

_Signing a paper that states Draco Malfoy is dead would be a public acknowledgement that we were connected. Harry and Ron would know and so would everyone else. I'd be a laughingstock, especially if Rita Skeeter got wind of it and Malfoy never showed up to tell everyone it was an accident. A mistake. As if anyone would believe it after the press finished._

_Malfoy could come back at any time and happily blast me into pieces for declaring him dead and for finding out we were married. I would probably let him at that point._

_My love life is abysmally absent. Two months with Ron Weasley and a truly dreadful set up with Anthony Goldstein have been the full measure of my adult dating experience. If people were intimidated to approach me romantically before, now they will run completely in the opposite direction when they found out that I contracted Malfoy in a secret marriage before declaring him dead to the Ministry so they could steal his estate. Despite a few issues with that story that no one would care about when reading it in the newspaper, it would still be fairly true at the root._

Hermione dropped her quill and shoved the parchment away from her off of the desk before laying her her head in folded arms. The only option left was to hope that Malfoy didn't actually survive, but despite how that would solve all of her problems, something in her chest hurt at the thought of him lying dead somewhere.

She must have fallen asleep because when she woke up Harry was standing beside her shaking her arm.

"How did you get in here!" Hermione gasped. "I warded—"

Harry crossed his arms and scowled down at her. "Your _house-elf _let me in."

She didn't know quite what to say at this, so she didn't say anything. It was obvious that he had found out, but where did—

"House-elf? I don't have any—"

"A Malfoy family house-elf, then. The same one that came to get me when you were at the Ministry last week," Harry bit out. "Care to explain what's going on?"

"Why didn't you just ask the house-elf?" Hermione sniped. "Since you've apparently already made up your mind about me."

Harry frowned, flicking a bit of his overgrown inky hair from his eyes. "Can't blame me for being angry about this, Hermione. And I don't even know what 'this' is other than the house-elf just said that _you_ are his mistress. I didn't even think to ask last week. I ran to get Ron and Kingsley so we could stop them from taking you to Azkaban. You haven't talked to anyone all week, just holed yourself up in here with—" He stopped for a moment and picked up a book. "Books about _marriage bonds_? Really?" Harry flung the book back down on the desk, toppling over her favourite tea cup and splashing cold tea everywhere.

"If you start swearing," Hermione warned with a wagging finger, "I won't say a word and you'll just have to wonder for the rest of your life."

Harry scowled and plopped down on the sofa near her desk. "You're just lucky that Ron didn't hear what that elf said. Start talking."

Hermione siphoned up the spilt tea with her wand while she thought of how to begin. Eventually, she settled on a quick, yet informative answer: "I think I accidentally married Malfoy."

Harry snorted. "That's it? That's all you're going to say? Glad to hear that it was accidental at least."

"What do you expect me to say? It's really none of your business, now is it?"

He looked at her darkly over the top of his glasses. She forgot how intimidating Harry could appear sometimes. "When has that ever stopped you before?"

Checkmate.

"Fine," she huffed and sat back in her chair. "You want the dirty details then, do you?"

Harry winced and she felt a slow smirk creep up her face.

"There aren't any," she assured him. "Not really. I only ever kissed him the once."

Harry's already scrunched eyes tightened more and he mimed gagging. "Hermione! Tell me you're joking."

"Or you could say he kissed me," she mused, pretending to ignore Harry. "Then Neville knocked on the door. It could have been more. Who knows?"

Harry closed his eyes. "You've made your point. I don't want to know about that. Just tell me what happened."

Hermione threw up her hands. "I don't know! I've been trying to figure it out all week. There were some things that I ignored, even before Draco . . . left. All my owl posts started going to Malfoy Manor. Then the house-elves started treating me differently. I wasn't sure why, and I hadn't really thought of it until this week when the Wizengamot cornered me. At the time it was happening, there was a much more serious threat at hand."

She lazily cast the tracing spell on a spare sheet of parchment and handed it to Harry. "See for yourself."

Harry scanned it quickly. "Why isn't Lucius Malfoy on here? He's not dead."

"Apparently when he gave his signet ring to Draco he wiped himself from the living family record or something. I'm not quite sure. But there I am. I'm listed as a living relative."

"Hermione Granger Malfoy," Harry said, scrunching his nose. He crumpled the parchment up and jammed it in his pocket. "Bloody awful."

"You said you wouldn't swear," Hermione reminded him primly.

Harry smirked. "Yeah, right. Expect me not to swear about this? My best friend is married to my— well, what is he, anyway? Voldemort was my 'arch-nemesis' so what does that make Malfoy?"

"Oldest anti-friend?" Hermione suggested.

Harry snorted. "Yeah, that I reckon. Couldn't sound anymore juvenile if you tried, though."

"Sort of the point."

Hermione grinned at Harry and he returned the grin before getting up and stuffing himself back down next to her in her little chair. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders. "Definitely better that I found out about this before Ron. He would go hunt Malfoy down and hex him."

"And you're not?" Hermione asked incredulously.

Harry shrugged. "I don't have to hunt him down. I know right where he is."

Hermione jumped up from the chair. "What?"

"That's what I had been coming to tell you.

"Oh my—" Hermione fluttered her hands over her hair agitatedly. "Why didn't you tell me that first!" she shrieked.

She started walking toward her bedroom and Harry followed her.

"I thought you'd want to know," he said from behind her, "but I didn't think it was so Earth-shatteringly important to you."

He stood there in the doorway until he realised she was changing her clothes and decided to turn smartly on his heel to face the other direction. Hermione didn't even notice him as she tossed clothing in all directions, looking for something— _something_.

She waved her wand over herself to freshen up, disgusted to realise that she hadn't properly bathed for almost a full week and she was more than a little fragrant. A light gray robe with powder blue lining came to hand finally. She sniffed it, tapped it with her wand, and deemed it acceptable despite the fact that her mother had never seemed to have understood her colouring. Earth tones always worked better for her so maybe she should . . .

"Harry," she said, her voice muffled as she pulled it over her head. "Why did you think to come get me when you saw Malfoy? And where is he?"

He shrugged. "I don't really know. I mean, Ron and I noticed that you seemed to have become a bit fond of him. Or at least I noticed. After last week even Ron figured out that something was up."

Hermione ran a brush through her hair and winced before twirling her wand to bring it into a subdued chignon on the back of her head.

"Where is he? I don't want anyone from the Ministry talking to him about this marriage business before I can. He'll want to murder me as it is, although I don't know _why_ considering that I didn't have anything to do with it!" she rambled breathlessly.

"Decent?" Harry asked.

Hermione nodded first with a hairpin in her mouth, then muttered around it: "yes."

Harry didn't say anything as he watched her stab pins into her hair to hold it in place. He was still silently watching as she hopped on one foot to put her shoes on, sans stockings or socks of any kind.

"Hermione . . ."

She looked up at him while she smoothed her robes down.

"Do you _actually_ fancy him? Malfoy?"

Hermione felt a warm flow of blood over her chest and neck. "A little. Maybe. Probably not. I mean, he's Malfoy. Don't be ridiculous, Harry!" she finally scolded. "I need to get this business with him sorted out and that's that."

Harry raised his eyebrows. "Right, let's go then. Last I saw him, he was storming through the Atrium toward Kingsley's office. The Aurors might have detained him a couple of days ago for questioning . . ."

It was Hermione's turn now to raise her eyebrows. "Why didn't you tell me then?"

"Your flat was warded up and we'd been trying to get you to talk to us for days, hadn't we?"

Hermione pursed her lips in acknowledgement. "I suppose."

She took Harry's arm and they Floo'd to the Ministry Atrium directly from her flat. Even though she knew that Draco would be close by, she wasn't expecting to see him as soon as she walked out of the fireplace but there he was. At the far end of the hall Hermione saw him speaking with Kingsley. There were apparently heated words being exchanged and they walked as they talked, their aim apparently the very fireplace which Hermione had just stepped from.

Harry shifted beside her but she paid him no mind. She was arrested by the change in Malfoy's bearing since she'd last seen him. Perhaps it was the way he held his shoulders now or the expression on his face. He was almost like a stranger and it reminded Hermione of the transformation she'd seen in Harry all those years ago after their journey through the forests and hillsides. Draco had more the carriage of a man now than a boy, even though he had already been well past his boyhood when he left, it was now very evident that his experience with the Green Knight had altered him in some vital way. More alert, perhaps; a more commanding presence. He had ripened from his previous state of perpetual spoiled childhood into a man and it seemed to fit him well.

Draco stopped suddenly in the hall when he saw her only a few feet away. Kingsley stopped, too, and Hermione felt Harry's awkward presence beside her. The hall was thick with people who either surreptitiously glanced their way or outright stared to see Draco Malfoy returned from the dead.

"Hermione," he said.

Her name was soft on his lips and some thrill shot through her at the sound. She fought against expressing it with a physical shiver. He didn't seem angry with her, merely startled and almost reverent. She bit her lip and looked at the floor. It was a far cry from his childish flirting and sly glances.

"We need to talk."

Her head shot up at that, eyes wide with panic. He must have found out somehow and the thought of having to explain it to him made her stomach twist into knots.

"Malfoy," Harry started, stepping in front of her. "Don't take it out on Hermione. She didn't know anything about this until recently."

Draco's cool gaze slid from Hermione to Harry. "Do I look upset, Potter?" he said slowly and perhaps a bit condescendingly. "It's none of your business what I need to talk to her about. You'll keep your nose out of it if you know what's good for you."

More than a bit.

Harry's brow turned thunderous and Hermione smelled a storm brewing that she wanted to stop before there was a scene. "Harry don't," she asked him with a hand on his arm. "He's right. We do need to talk. And it _is _none of your business."

Harry pressed his lips tightly and he acknowledged her with a look. She stared back calmly and after a moment he spun on his heel and walked toward the Auror's offices. Hermione sighed and turned back to face Draco and Kingsley.

"Sir, Mr Malfoy and I have personal matters to discuss. That is if you're not putting him in Azkaban this very moment," she couldn't help adding waspishly.

Kingsley's smooth brown face creased deeply around his lips. "This situation isn't resolved yet," he said. "Still, after reading the report from the Auror's office and the transcript from the pensieve I suppose there's reasonable explanation of Mr Malfoy's disappearance."

He heaved a sigh and glanced at Draco. "Don't take off again, boy, and I'll make sure you have a fair hearing with all evidence presented. Until then, go home and stay there."

Draco nodded stiffly in acknowledgement and moved closer to Hermione. "I need you to come with me."

Hermione glanced once at Kingsley and saw the conflict on his face but decided to ignore it. "I suppose I must if we're to figure this out."

Draco pushed forward past Kingsley and escorted her a few feet toward one of the Ministry Floos, his hand on her lower back in an intimate way that made her discomfited and itchy knowing that Harry's eyes were following them. She chose not to acknowledge the other feelings at all.

She was so disoriented that she wasn't quite sure where they had landed until she saw the marble foyer. Malfoy Manor, of course. Draco placed his hand on her back just as before and steered her toward the master library. He walked around the desk and seemed to think better of sitting behind it. Instead he pulled out a chair for her in front of the cold fireplace.

Hermione took a moment to gather herself by pretending to dust ashes from the skirt of her robes while Draco summoned house-elves to attend the fire and a tea tray. She kept looking at her hands in silence. Draco paced from carpet to wood flooring while the elves put things in order. _Clip-clip-clip-clack-turn-clip-clip-clip-clack._

"I didn't know," he said suddenly.

Hermione had been almost hypnotized by the sound of his shoes so when he spoke she was quite startled. "Know what?"

He looked at her witheringly. "Stupidity doesn't suit you, Hermione."

She frowned but said nothing more for a moment. Draco sat down in the winged chair beside her. Cups of tea appeared on the small table between them and he handed hers over before cradling his own between bone white fingers.

"What are we supposed to do now?" Hermione asked aloud. "Can we break this?"

"I'll assume coming from you that that question is strictly rhetorical. You'll know, of course, that we can't." He sipped his tea thoughtfully.

"Your next question is probably 'how' and I don't know exactly." Draco glanced at his signet ring. "I suppose it has to do with this stupid thing. It's fairly close to sentient and family legend has many instances of it taking matters into its own proverbial hands."

Hermione stared into her tea cup and they drifted into a contemplative silence that lacked the initial nervous energy of a few moments before. She wished that she believed in or was any good at tasseography. It would be convenient; tea cup already in her hand and so many questions on her mind.

"How is your mother?" Hermione asked in a soft voice so she wouldn't break the hush and civility of the current atmosphere. Time for fireworks later, she thought. Then she flushed from the double meaning in that choice of words and almost didn't catch Draco's response.

"She's recovering well," he said with some surprise. "Mother woke as soon as I touched her with the emerald, but still, she's been in a coma and not moving for several months, so it'll be some time, I suppose, until she's up and about."

Hermione nodded. It would probably be some time before she could even sit up unassisted let alone stand up or walk. Probably best that she not hear about the 'good news' until she was out of hospital.

"I'm glad she survived." Hermione sipped her tea. It was still too hot. "I thought you had died, you know. And I only found out about . . . the situation when the Wizengamot tried to make me declare you dead."

Draco exhaled strongly through his nose, the sound scoffing. "Greedy bastards. Not surprised that they went straight for our gold. They were angry that we didn't pay as much as some other families after the War."

"For what it's worth, I don't think the full Wizengamot was behind it. I think it was pushed by a few and some others went along with it. Kingsley said half of the members that day were missing, so just a small faction."

"It wasn't a small faction! It was more than half the members, Hermione," Draco said as he set his tea cup down a bit too hard. "Enough to call a bloody conspiracy in my book."

The fragile atmosphere of peace was fracturing. Hermione tried to steer him away from thoughts of the Ministry. "Don't worry about them. You survived. You're home. You'll probably be pardoned soon."

Draco's face grew very long and his scowling eyebrows drew together further. "You're trying to change the subject. But we need to talk about it."

"You can't even say what 'it' is!" Hermione cried.

"As if you're doing better?" he sneered. "Our _marriage_, how about that?"

"What about it?" Hermione asked. "It's not as if we can do anything."

Draco shrugged. "You're better than some of the other picks I had shoved at me in recent years. At least you can hold a bloody conversation."

"I'd hold a conversation better if you wouldn't swear all the time."

Hermione thought he'd snap at her for that but he smirked instead. "And you're funny, Granger. Who cares about swearing anymore? My great-grandmother maybe."

She pursed her lips and mimed taking a sip of her tea to avoid spitting some choice words of her own at him. The smile hadn't left his face and it was making her nervous.

"What _are _you looking at?" Hermione snapped. "You're grinning like a goon."

The smile faded a bit and his face became slightly more sombre. "I'm looking at my wife. You aren't what I would have chosen, but I think you'll do."

Hermione rolled her eyes. "Do you flatter all the girls like that?"

He shrugged with a Gallic sort of ease. "Just you."

"Aren't I special?" she muttered as she set her cup down with a _clack_ and stood up. "As wonderful as this reunion was, I have work to do."

Draco was looking into the fire and didn't turn his head when she got up. "Liar. You were fired last week. I asked."

Once again Hermione wasn't sure if she was flattered or offended by the fact that he had made inquiries about her.

"Aren't you curious about what happened to me? For you I was gone over six months and for me, well, it wasn't quite so long."

He had her there.

"What do you mean it wasn't quite so long for you?" she blurted. "How could time be different for you?"

"Too bad, I'm not telling you now," he said. "You'll have to find out tomorrow."

Hermione put her hands on her hips. "Why not now? Do you have some sort of pressing engagement of which I'm not aware?"

"'Of which I'm not aware' . . . do you always speak with such perfect grammar? Too good for dangling participles are you?"

Her mouth twisted to the side. "Are you done taking the mick?"

"Oooh slang!" Draco teased.

She wished that she still had the expensive bone china tea cup in her hand so she could throw it at his head. "I'll have to remain curious. I'm not coming back here."

Draco unfolded himself leisurely from his chair with the air of smug certainty that a cat had when about to pounce on a budgie.

"No need. You'll be here."

Hermione squirmed against the heat flushing her cheeks. Her voice sounded far away in her own ears. "You have a lot of ner—"

"How long did you spend picking out your clothes before you came to the Ministry?" Draco asked suddenly. "Did you dash madly through your room trying to find something attractive? Did you rush through the Ministry halls—"

The heat was now more from embarrassment than a budding awareness of his presence. "That _doesn't _mean that I'll—"

"It does."

Hermione closed her eyes and shook her head. "But I'm not one of those—"

"No," Draco agreed quietly. "You aren't."

She opened her eyes to see his face only a few inches from her own. "We really shouldn't."

He wound his arm around her waist and pulled her closer. "We will. Eventually. Maybe even tonight. It may have only been three days for me, but it's still too long without another kiss from you."

Hermione was embarrassed and didn't know quite where to look so she stared down the top button on his robes. Very slowly she raised her hand and twiddled with his collar and felt his chest shudder. It was good to know that he seemed similarly affected. This was no grand farewell. She would see his face possibly every day for many years and it was just … different this time.

He crooked a finger under her chin and stroked the soft skin there. "Don't curl up on me. You aren't a bloody worm, are you? What use is a Gryffindor wife if she—"

Hermione grabbed the cloth under her hand and pulled his face closer. "I'm not a coward."

She let him kiss her then with his smirking mouth, aware that the years ahead might not be perfect but at least they'd never be dull.

* * *

><p><strong>So folks, normally I don't squawk for reviews. It's a bit unseemly, isn't it? However, I'd really enjoy knowing what people think of this considering my very long hiatus from writing fanfiction. I also have another story, MUCH longer, that I'm going to start putting up soon now that I know where the ending is going and how I'm going to get there. I like to write plotty things with romance instead of romance with some plot . . . somewhere. Maybe. This big long story I have has been in the works since before my 3rd child was born and I'm on #4 already if that gives you an indication. 2010 I think. Wow, 4 or 5 years. Time flies. <strong>

**Anyway, if you could see it in your heart to review Winterborn, I will send you a snippet of my next fic as a thank you. I like constructive reviews so if there was anything you felt could be improved please tell me! If there was anything you really liked, I'd like to hear that, too. Catch y'all later! ::waves::**


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